To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari
by Narrator 1
Summary: World War III has ended. The threat of the witches has been vanquished for all time. Yet there are those who wish to trample over the sacrifices that made these miracles possible. When magic and science once again collide, these stories must continue.
1. The First Spell – Index I

"… _As long as the usual you returns from this, nothing else matters."_

"_I _will _come back."_

"_I will _definitely _come back."_

"… _I'll definitely apologize to you with my head bowed down in front of you."_

* * *

**To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari**

The First Spell – Index Librorum Prohibitorum I

* * *

"Nn… ngh… fumyuuu—WAHHH!"

Uttering that nonsensical sound, Index Librorum Prohibitorum tumbled out of her bed and fell flat on her face. Fortunately for her, the bed was not too far elevated from the floor due to the small size of the dormitory room she was in; thus, her fall surprised rather than injured her. Even so, the fall was enough of a jolt to break her rest. She opened her eyes and, while rubbing the sleep from them, looked toward the window. Even through the nearly fully-closed blinds, she could see the early morning daylight peeking through.

With some effort, she pulled herself off the floor and peered at a small digital clock placed near the bedpost. It read 7:08 am. She began the usual ritual of morning preparations – showering, donning her golden-patterned white nun habit, brushing her teeth, washing her face, tending to her nearly waist-length hair, and the like. For someone like Index, even this routine exertion was enough to work up an appetite, so she next walked briskly to the kitchen. Here, she was not alone.

Hearing a pitiful mewling sound, she looked at her feet to see her pet calico cat, Sphinx, sitting rather pitifully near an empty dog bowl. Not thinking for even a second that the animal may have purposefully positioned itself in a calculated play on the owner's sympathies, Index forgot her own hunger long enough to pulled out a small can of cat food. She expended enough energy in working the pull-tab loose on the cat food can to increase her own appetite. When she finally did open the food can and empty its nondescript brown mushy contents onto the bowl, Sphinx turned up its tiny nose and, whiskers shaking to and fro, stared up at Index with an expression that could not be read as anything other than displeasure.

"It's not good to be picky," Index scolded her pet cat. "Good children eat their food in all thankfulness." Perhaps having understood her on some level, the cat then started nibbling into its food without further complaint.

Finding human fare was easier than it should have been; there was a perfectly serviceable pot full of seafood paella in the refrigerator, courtesy of the Tsuchimikado siblings next door. She hungrily pulled the pot out, said her customary "_Itadakimasu_," stabbed into the contents with her utensils, and shoved large portions into her mouth.

"Ah, Touma," she said while quickly wiping her mouth with a napkin. "Could you pass me the soy—"

Index stopped herself in mid-sentence. An awkward silence permeated the entirety of the apartment building, drowning out the background noises from the usual morning rush of the city outside. Even Sphinx quit eating and stared fixedly at her. She returned the cat's gaze with a frowning glare. For a soundless three-and-a-half seconds, she and it locked eyes, as if each of them dared the other party to say something, anything. Then the cat relented and, bowing its head down and slinking back as if in contrition, resumed eating. Index sighed and did the same; yet she was not in the mood to hurriedly devour the dish as usual. She took her time.

"_Gochisousama_," the white-skinned, silver-haired, green-eyed, British Index shouted in impeccable Tokyo-style Japanese. After cleaning up and leaving the cat in the kitchen, Index walked to the living room and remotely turned on the television.

"—in the process of cleaning up St. Peter's Basilica, which was destroyed in a terrorist attack shortly before the events of World War III—"

Index growled and changed the channel.

"—the latest statement from religious authorities concerning the strange floating fortress which crashed in the Arctic—"

An ugly frown creased her pretty, doll-like face as she quickly changed the channel.

"In other news, through a statement released by its Board of Directors, Academy City has announced its intention to cooperate fully with relief workers in distributing aid to those in the Russian countryside hardest hit by the war—"

Index changed the channel again… and again… and again… and again. The resolution of the global conflict between Academy City and Russia dominated the TV landscape. Even channels not devoted entirely to news kept their eyes on the events surrounding the war. Index, who had been used as a catalyst to begin the war in the first place, and who had lost someone in that war, did not want to hear any more. Eventually, she turned off the television.

She could find no common cause with or sympathy for Russia, which had been propelled into war by an ambitious ultraconservative Eastern Orthodox bishop in collusion with an extremist faction from the Roman Catholic Church. This faction had imprisoned her mind by use of a control artifact in order to forcibly access the vast library of magical information stored within and use it to destroy and remake the world in their image. Although they ultimately failed, due to the intervention of a certain Japanese boy, the war they caused had wrecked irreparable harm upon the world. Christian magicians all over the world would face a dramatic upheaval in their core belief systems in the days to come.

The other side of the war was little better. Academy City, a network of schools and research institutes located within western Tokyo, Japan, was a city built on the basis of strict adherence to the scientific method. It forcefully denounced religious and occult thought as mere superstition, denying the very foundations upon which the occult was built. The victory it scored over the much larger and much more numerically powerful Russian army was an anti-miracle; it demonstrated the power of Academy City's "hard science" against the magic and divine forces backing their enemies. While the Anglican Church shocked the Christian orthodoxy by siding with Academy City against its fellow religionists in France, Spain, and Italy, who had backed Russia, the move was a calculated political ploy by a ruthless archbishop.

Now, the boy who had saved her was gone, having disappeared in the wreckage of the floating fortress where the final battle had taken place. By choosing to remain at his home in Academy City over the objections of the Anglicans, in the hope that he would return, she had placed herself into a tenuous situation. She, a magician, was in enemy territory, buried within a sea of more than three million people who might well turn against her.

And this time, Kamijou Touma would not be there to leap to her aid.

"Touma…" she said softly, tears beginning to form in her eyes. "You said you would definitely come back…"

Before Index could shed any tears, a steady series of popping noises rang across her ears. These were faint enough that she could tell they originated from outside, yet sharp enough that they stood out from the ordinary noises of the city. These sounds steadily increased in frequency and intensity, increasing Index's anxiety. After six of these sounded off, Index had become fairly certain that something was amiss. After stuffing Sphinx into her nun habit for its own safety so that only its head poked out, she cautiously tiptoed to the apartment balcony, where she guessed that the abrupt sounds originated.

She had made it just past the balcony's sliding door and outside just in time to witness an explosion of light, sound, metal, and fire some four yards above her eye level.

"WAHHHH!"

With a surprised yelp, Index lost her balance and tumbled backwards through the still-open door and back inside, flinging her cat away from her in the process. After conquering the ringing in her ears, she turned her eyes upwards to take a better look at what was happening. But what caught her attention would not be above the balcony and in the air, but on the balcony railing itself.

Draped across the balcony railing lay a creature, the likes of which Index had never seen before. At first glance, she detected a vaguely feline base, but from then on out the creature was clearly, unmistakably fantastical. On the base of its back, standing out easily from its snow-white pelt, was a deep red marking in the shape of an imperfect ellipsis. Near this was a bushy tail whose volume and length nearly matched that of the rest of its body. Protruding from its catlike ears were two droopy, fleshy structures whose tips fanned out into three perfectly symmetrical, white-to-pink-gradient tips per "earlobe". At each tip, a red dot would mark the transition from white to pink. Even more strangely, at the midpoint between each of its two ears and its corresponding tips floated a ring of pure gold.

"Eh?" Index asked unintelligently, when faced with this strange creature who defied easy identity. "Eh? EHHHHHH?"

As if in response to Index's voice, the creature, the base of whose body had been draped across the balcony like a discarded toy, began to move. It slowly lifted its head up, and when Index looked into its eyes, she saw two shining red orbs, the likes of which could not possibly have been on any natural creature, staring back at her. In disbelief, Index drew back slowly.

_Maybe I should let this little one seek happiness in a faraway place…_ she initially thought. She had begun to suspect that this creature was a magical tool or familiar of some sort… or if not strictly magical, then otherwise some runaway experiment of Academy City. It could even have been some state-of-the-art Academy City child's plaything that had been thrown aside after it had seen its usage. The black marks scattered around its otherwise pristine white fur would attest to that. Whatever the case, she felt that more trouble would come her way if she inquired further. So with that in mind, she made up her mind to slowly back away…

_"A sister? How unexpected, to see a Christian sister dressed in full clothing in this far Eastern country_." Index clearly heard a light, nigh-childish voice in her head. She glanced around her surroundings rather exaggeratedly before fixating her gaze back at the creature.

"Was that you? That was you, wasn't it?" Index asked aloud. "You can communicate with me with… um… telepathy, was the term the scientists used?"

_"Ah, so you can hear me, Sister-san. I thought that I was merely talking to myself." _The concise and pointed response assured Index that the creature was the one from which the voice originated, although she did not see its mouth move at all. _"How fortunate for you. That must mean you have the potential to become a wonderful Puella Magi. Coming to this city may not be as fruitless as I originally thought."_

"A 'magical girl'?" Index translated, her previous worry replaced with the first smile she has had her on face all day. "You mean, like Magical Powered Kanamin?"

_"If that is what you wish_," the creature responded as it hopped off the balcony in a most feline fashion. _"__I am a messenger from the Heavens who answers the desires of the faithful. No matter how impossible the wish, I can grant it."_

"And you've come to grant my wish?" Index skeptically asked the creature. "For what reason?"

_"Actually,"_ it answered back, "_I did not specifically come to seek you out, at least not this time. I landed here by chance after we were attacked."_

"You were attacked?" Even as Index asked that question, she took a second glance at the creature's injuries. She then silently cursed herself for her momentary inattentiveness, which was unforgivable as a representative of her faith to a foreign land. "Just wait there a bit. You're injured, aren't you? This Index will fix you up."

_"I'm fine. I was just knocked around a bit." _Although Index had heard the creature's words clearly, she consciously chose to disregard them and ran the distance from the balcony to the restroom in such a timely manner as would have made Kamijou reassess her athletic capabilities. When she had returned with a clean mini-towel in hand, she saw that Sphinx had woken up and walked outside the balcony, and that it was currently in a staring contest with the white creature. Sphinx's body was arched back, its tail pointed upward, its fur stood on end, and it was snarling even as it fixed its gaze on their guest.

In contrast, the other creature was as still as a pond as its beady red eyes returned the stare, with only its bushy tail swishing to and fro.

"SPHINX!" Index shouted; in response, the cat merely backed away slowly while keeping its labored stare fixed on the intruder.

_"It seems as if this one dislikes me_," the white creature responded.

"Sphinx," Index picked up the cat and stuffed it into her habit so that only its head poked out, "you're being rude to our guest. What has gotten into you?" With that done, she picked up the white creature and began the process of slowly rubbing away the black marks on its pelt. "I haven't introduced myself. I am Index Librorum Prohibitorum. You can just call me Index for short."

_" _'_Index Librorum Prohibitorum'? That is in Latin, isn't it? Naturally, it would bring to mind a mountain of questions concerning why an obviously foreign young girl named after the Catholic Church's List of Forbidden Books is living in the heart of Japan,"_ it responded as it was being tended to, _"but you probably have your own circumstances. It wouldn't be my place to pry. As for me, my name is Kyuubey."_

"Kyuubey?" Index asked, with one hand on taking care of Kyuubey while the other was thumping the still-restless Sphinx on the head. "That's no less strange a name than Index Librorum Prohibitorum. So, what are you anyway?" she asked Kyuubey. "Since you know about the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, you must be a creature of magic. Who's your master? What magic organization are you from? You're not here on a mission to attack Academy City, are you? … Sphinx, quit squirming!"

_"We are here looking for something… or probably someone_," Kyuubey responded. "_I'm not too sure of the details, but if it's that person, then it is best that you not be—"_

An ear-piercing cacophony of glass shattering brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.

When Index turned around, a cloud of dust, debris, and glass shards assaulted her senses. She huddled around Sphinx and Kyuubey and closed her eyes to shield them from the explosion. Upon reopening them, Index spotted through the haze of the dust cloud the outlines of two slim, humanoid figures. Once the dust cloud subsided, Index ran to investigate the one closest to her – and gasped in shock and some horror at what she saw.

Collapsed atop a heap of glass and what was once a section of the apartment wall, a girl lay motionless and on her side. A small pool of blood surrounded the girl's legs, and she wore an expression indicative of prolonged pain on her face. Index, for her part, could instantly recognize who the injured girl was. The long, brown hair tied into twin tails… the petite, lithe figure… the telltale brown jumper shirt and checkered skirt of the elite school she attended… and the green armband further distinguishing her as a member of Academy City's volunteer law enforcement unit, "Judgment".

"Shirai… Kuroko?" Although Index had known this girl only as a passing acquaintance, Shirai's distinctive look and Index's innate ability of perfect memory retention allowed for easy identification. As Index was examining Shirai's condition, Kyuubey leaped from her hand and calmly walked toward the site of the incident. Through a freshly-made hole where the front window was, Index could see the form of another girl.

Unlike with Shirai Kuroko, Index had never seen either this other girl or any identifiers within her clothing before. This other girl wore her jet-black hair long and unbound, allowing it to reach down to her waist and flap freely in the wind. At the base of her head, she wore a pink headband. Her eyes boasted a deep, mesmerizing shade of violet. For clothing, she wore a one-piece shirt-and-skirt combination held together at the nape of her neck with a bow, which, along with the color of the skirt, matched well with the color of her eyes. Beneath the skirt was a black pair of pantyhose with an argyle pattern at the sides of the legs. On her left arm rested a gray artifact which resembled a shield, except that the center of it and two nodes on each side were hollowed out.

All in all, Index thought for a second that this girl, who looked no older than middle school aged, reminded her of Magical Powered Kanamin. The outfit was certainly stylized. However, there was nothing magical about the shiny, metallic device that she carried in her right hand, with the deadly end pointed in Index's and Shirai's direction.

It was a gun.

Index, who was technophobic and in general technology-illiterate to a fault due to her upbringing in a society which disdained and belittled the usage of modern technology (including guns), could not tell how powerful it was, who made it, how many bullets it contained, or the like. She could, however, make a very educated guess that it was she who, with that gun in her hand, opened the ugly wound at the base of Shirai Kuroko's right leg.

"WHO ARE YOU?" Index shouted to the intruder.

"That was the last of them," the girl with the gun responded, withdrawing her firearm and running her free hand through the length of her hair in a manner that seemed contemptuously callous to Index. "We've wasted enough time as it is. We're leaving, Kyuubey."


	2. The Second Spell – Index II

"_WHO ARE YOU?"_

"_That was the last of them. We've wasted enough time as it is. We're leaving, Kyuubey."_

* * *

**To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari**

The Second Spell – Index Librorum Prohibitorum II

* * *

The girl in violet leaped into the open sky in front of the apartment complex, with the strange white creature called Kyuubey perched on her left shoulder. From there, she instantly and literally disappeared from sight, leaving a stunned Index Librorum Prohibitorum and a wounded Shirai Kuroko in her wake.

_That just now… was magic!_ The magic was practically instantaneous in its activation, and much too sudden and immediate for Index to analyze on the spot…

…but it was magic nonetheless, and powerful magic at that.

That one realization, Index realized, even as she rearmed herself with the first aid kit, would complicate and worsen the unfolding situation. Just by virtue of her demonstrated ability to wield magic, and at that against the protectors of the city, she would cause Academy City to once again become a battlefield. After Judgment failed to stop the magical intruder, security and police forces such as Academy City's Anti-Skill would bring out the bigger guns. Although such forces were well-armed and well-trained in the art and science of neutralizing criminals with psychic powers, Index remembered that the few times she had seen them fielded against even singular, moderately-prepared magic users had ended disastrously for them. To put it frankly, they were vastly unprepared for the versatility, raw power, and determination an antagonistic magician could bring to bear.

With the Anglican Church's Necessarius busy with rebuilding its own forces and nation, and with the hero named Kamijou Touma gone, the question of who could stem this fresh tide of conflict arose. For the sake of the city, and for the sake of the boy who loved and protected the city, and for the sake of preserving the perilous balance between magic and science, Index Librorum Prohibitorum felt strongly that she would have to bring down this malefactor herself.

However, before she could even begin to do that, she had a girl right before her eyes in need of salvation.

After confirming that she was still breathing and conscious, she delicately unrolled and straightened Shirai's body from its hunched-over position, taking care to keep the wounded leg level and clear the debris from the explosion away from the wound. She wrapped a fresh, unused piece of gauze around the base of the wound as a tourniquet. From what little she picked up from Academy City's compulsory First Aid classes while tagging along with Kamijou, she figured that this was the best she, personally, could do unassisted.

_If only I could use magic to deal with this_, she could not help but think… just as she heard a muted buzzing sound accompanied by something vibrating within her left pocket. On reflex, she fished around said pocket and found a pink cellphone. She opened it and immediately looked for the button to answer the call, only to find that she didn't have to press anything further.

"This is Uiharu," the youthful, panicked female voice on the other end of the line squeaked. "Shirai-san, we have reason to believe the intruder's an esper of some kind, teleportation or increased movement speed. She's already eluded three barricades and now seems to be changing course and heading back toward District 10. Yanagisako-sempai and Kaneyama-kun aren't responding. …Shirai-san? Shirai-san, come in! You can hear me, can't—"

"You're with Judgment, aren't you? Shirai Kuroko is in danger," Index cut in, neatly interrupting the girl on the other side of the line. "She's in the front room of a seventh-floor boy's dormitory, with a bullet wound in her leg." After narrowing down the address further, she added, "I've already taken care of the blood loss, but she still needs medical attention. Please call for medical assistance!"

"Excuse me," the one named "Uiharu" responded, "but who is this?"

"Hurry up and make the call!" Index shouted. "Every second counts!"

"Y-yes, Ma'am!" was all Index heard Uiharu say before the call ended.

After confirming once more that Shirai was still breathing and that the blood loss was properly stemmed, Index disabled the automatic locking mechanism (for all the good that did, as there was still a gaping hole in the front wall) and set out.

When magicians violated the boundaries between magic and science, the burden of bringing them to justice fell upon other magicians. Index Librorum Prohibitorum would uphold this tenet even as the justifications were steadily falling apart.

Moreover, as worried as she was about Shirai, Index's own position was a precarious one. She was still technically an illegal immigrant living in a foreign city. A deal brokered between the Anglican Church and Academy City, contingent upon Kamijou Touma's role as her guardian, had given her the political cover she needed to stay in the city, which otherwise kept tight controls on who was allowed inside and when. With Kamijou gone, and with her having actively defied her superiors in the United Kingdom with her decision to stay, she could not assume that she would be protected, if she were to be apprehended by Academy City's law enforcement and questioned on her immigration status. She left the scene for her sake as well as for others'.

* * *

Index ran out of the apartment and into a rapidly deteriorating scene of pandemonium.

Vehicles belonging to first-responders – fire, police, and the like – gathered in a seemingly haphazard array at the entrance to the boys' dormitory building. A growing crowd of panicked students gathered near the entrance, and in the distance, Index could view a procession of the telltale navy blue vans of Anti-Skill speeding to the scene of the incident; and when she had made it to the floor, she could look back and see that, for once, the structural damage had _not_ miraculously been localized to the Kamijou apartment. Indeed, there were even larger holes in the sides and doors of the sixth and eighth floors of the complex.

_The girl from Judgment said that the magician was headed toward District 10_, recalled Index. _And we're in District 7..._

(There were twenty-three school districts in Academy City. District 7, located near the center of Academy City, was one of the larger and more populous districts. Within District 7 were located the student dormitories as well as many of the city's middle and high schools, from the prestigious Tokiwadai to the not-quite-as-prestigious high school Kamijou Touma and Tsuchimikado Motoharu attended. It was also home to the office of the General Superintendent, the personage to whom the Board of Directors ultimately answered. Bordering District 7 to the southeast, and situated at the southern end of the city, District 10 had somewhat of an unsavory reputation. Ostensibly devoted to energy research, District 10 also contained the city's correctional facilities and orphanages, as well as, more noticeably, the only cemetery in the city. Unsurprisingly, it was also a major stomping ground for "Skill-Out", a term for armed roving gangs of Level 0 washouts from Academy City's Esper Development Curriculum who tended to target their more successful peers.)

Index pulled her own cellphone out from underneath her robe while on the move. She accessed the cellphone's Global Positioning System and pulled up a map of Academy City, having seen Kamijou do the exact same thing during an earlier incident in which a lone magician walked through Academy City's security with ease. The border to District 10 was due south of her current position, and running to the inter-district border on foot would take roughly an hour and a half. Thinking on this, she quickly realized that trying to track a magician on foot, especially if the girl from Judgment was right and the magician could use instantaneous transportation, would likely be an exercise in futility. With that in mind, Index scanned the streets in hopes of finding an automated transport bus even as she continued her run.

In this environment, Index's attentions were divided among the three lines of checking her cellphone map, looking for quicker transports on the crowded roadways, and evading the eyes of Academy City's police and security forces. Thus, she was completely caught off-guard when a blinding light flashed before her eyes and an acute, stinging pain shot through her right hand, causing her to reflexively fling aside the cellphone.

Index, having been stopped in her tracks, looked around for the phone and saw it lying (face-up thankfully, which lessened the chances of main screen damage) on a sidewalk. As soon as she touched it, however, the sensation of pain from before returned. This time, as there was no blindness accompanying, she could see a sky-blue nimbus of static electricity flickering on-and-off around the machine. Puzzled, she glanced at the sky. It was mid-to-late morning, so the sun was still in the sky and the cloud cover was only moderate at best, with no signs of either rain or lightning.

While she had her gaze turned skyward, she saw a bolt of lightning race across the sky. The lightning, though high in the sky, was not quite at cloud level, so the source had to have been closer to the ground, at least relative to the skyline. Further inspection revealed that these blasts of lightning originated further from the road, behind one of the many wind turbines dotting the cityscape.

Although ignorant of the finer scientific points of electricity, Index knew that lightning simply did not act that way normally, so she went to investigate.

For her trouble, she found herself a mere couple of feet away from being flattened by a wind turbine rotor whirling freestyle like a giant white pinwheel at breakneck speed. Behind this dangerous projectile shot a trail of electricity. The dangerous shuriken crashed against the side of another wind turbine and detonated in a deafening boom, sending chunks of the building flying in all directions and creating a small cloud of dust. Index barely had time to look at the damage caused before the rotor, now suffused with an otherworldly purplish glow, floated away from the wreckage and rocketed back toward the other wind turbine… upon which it was completely sliced by a rod-shaped mass of razor-fine black sand particles.

Index tried to look up to get a better view of these strange phenomena, but the gaps in the view caused by the flying black things seemed to concentrate sunlight between them.

"Hey, you over there!" a girlish voice called in Index's direction while she was busy rubbing her eyes. "There's an esper terrorist on the loose, so you should be…"

Index, her vision and hearing cleared, knew that voice, and the girl to whom it belonged. Just like Shirai, she wore a Tokiwadai winter jumper and skirt. However, she was taller than Shirai (and slightly taller than Index herself), with short brown hair and eyes that matched well with her outfit. She also had somewhat of a tomboyish build to her. Most strikingly, however, her usually pristine school uniform had nicks and scratches all over it, especially around the arm sleeves.

That explained the electricity being thrown around. The girl in front of Index was Academy City's strongest and most versatile electricity-using esper.

"You… you're that idiot's pet nun!" Misaka Mikoto, the third of Academy City's seven Level 5 espers, the pride and joy of the Esper Development Curriculum, gracelessly hailed. "What are you doing all the way out here?"

"Who's a pet, Tanpatsu?" Index shot back.

"You picked a bad time to go sightseeing. You've got to get out of here." Electricity flashed between Misaka's bangs, and a ball of lightning formed within each of her palms. Misaka then faced the wind turbine, which now had a sizable dent in its side. "I know you're still around somewhere. So quit with the hiding and face me already!" Three streams of electricity shot out from Misaka's forehead and each of her hands and converged into a massive torrent of lightning, which destroyed the windmill in short order.

As soon as Misaka finished shooting, Index blinked… and then saw the violet magician (complete with Kyuubey perched on her shoulder) standing directly behind Misaka with the business end of her sidearm pointed at the back of her head. As with Misaka's, her outfit had evinced signs of the wear and tear of battle, but her stony expression did not change. "As you can see, I do not need to hide against the likes of you. Please do not make me pull the trigger."

Misaka, though visibly surprised and obviously caught off-guard, was not afraid. Instead, she suffused herself with a barrier of electricity that forced the other girl to quickly step back, lest she be immobilized by thousands of volts of sheer pain. However, even as she jumped back, she flung three objects forward. To Index, they looked like miniature green soda pop cans.

Index barely had the time to register just what those green things were when Misaka suddenly tackled her to the ground and covered her eyes and ears.

Thus covered, Index could hear only a muffled crackling sound and feel only a persistent tingling sensation across her back.

After four seconds, Misaka untangled herself from Index. "Hey, Shorty, are you all right down there?" she asked, shaking Index awake.

"Yeah…" Index confirmed, rubbing her eyes.

"Sorry about that. Those were just flash bombs. I can't believe I overreacted to something like—"

Two pink beams of energy descended from above and sliced through the cloud of distorted light. The first missed, but the second caught Misaka in the chest and blew her cleanly off her feet. With the trail of energy stuck to her taking the time to dissipate, Misaka rolled back to her feet and broke into a run, and a constant trail of pink energy lances dropped from the sky and lodged themselves into the ground behind her.

Index moved herself away from where Misaka was running and climbed her way to the top of another nearby windmill. Having done so, she could get a clearer look at the enemy. Surely enough, the magician in violet was the one sending those pink bolts after her. Apparently, she had foregone the use of conventional weapons entirely and was instead opting to use magic. The pink shots, Index could now plainly see, were arrows; from this revelation, it made perfect sense that the magical tool was a bow. The handle of the bow was a tree branch with a pink rose blossom at the tip. While one shot was nocked at a time, when fired, it would separate into four smaller shots which would fire simultaneously. The violet magician could easily control the speed at which the energy blasts traveled. She could manage up to twelve shots per second.

Strangely enough, although the magician was talented enough with the bow to keep Misaka on her toes, Index had gotten the sense of the bow being not hers, but someone else's. Perhaps it was the symbolism at play; the pink rose, in the language of flowers, symbolized grace, elegance, and appreciation. According to the prevalent idol theory of magic, in order to evoke the magic of the bow, the violet magician would need to bring out the qualities of grace and elegance. Yet the violet magician's moves, while not entirely clumsy, were practiced, rote, and purpose-filled; the girl wielding the bow did little to disguise the rigorous training she obviously went through to utilize the weapon.

Then again, it might well have just been the mismatching color scheme, with the bow (and the hairband, come to think of it) clashing with the magician's otherwise somber colors.

In any case, Index had analyzed what she felt she needed.

After lowering herself from her vantage point and returning to the battlefield, she took a deep breath.

"_**Reform and reverse direction,"**_ Index ordered. The latest round of bolts did just that, reforming into one concentrated mass of energy and shooting back upwards at the shooter. The violet magician dodged – barely – and nocked another set of arrows.

_Spell Intercept is working,_ Index noted.

"_**Full tilt upwards. Release. Stabilize. Amplify. Release." **_Index heard the confused scream of the violet magician in reaction to her bow seemingly taking on a life of its own. The weapon shot a concentrated beam of energy into the sky, whereupon a series of pink concentric circles formed in the sky, blotting out the clouds for a quick few seconds, and swallowed the energy. The enemy then must have had a good idea of what happened, because she used her method of instantaneous movement to get out from underneath those circles. Index had done the same.

Not even a second afterward, out from the center of the circle shot an avalanche of pink energy that reduced everything directly beneath the circle to a smoking ruin.

Index had tried to continue running, but the magician in violet overtook her and kicked her to the ground. She kept her right foot planted on Index's back, and she had her sidearm pointed at Index's head.

"That was you, wasn't it?" the violet magician asked coldly. "What did you just do?" Index, who was beginning to feel the wounds and fatigue piling up, did not answer. "Very well. Keep quiet if you desire. I will not ask you again. Just know this – I have something that I need to accomplish in this city." Index heard a clicking sound. "And if you continue to obstruct me, then I—"

"Pick on someone your own size!" With another spear of electricity and a roar, Misaka Mikoto rejoined the battle.

"Persistent…" the violet magician seethed, stepping aside to avoid this latest attack and thus distancing herself from Index. She reached into her shield, probably for another firearm, when the purple gem on her left arm began to emit a bright lavender gleam. Paying no heed to the nun and esper in front of her, the violet magician clicked her teeth in an undisguised show of irritation. "It's close."

Then, she simply disappeared, her visage and presence completely gone without a trace.

For the second time today, Misaka picked Index up. "What's with her? Teleportation? Energy projection? Instant materialization? Aerial bombardment? It was like fighting a flying armory! What kind of research institution could develop a Multi-Skill like that? Ah… I'm getting bad memories here." Index did not know whether Misaka was complaining to her specifically or simply giving voice to her frustration aloud, but something within her could not abide such ignorance in the face of the enemy.

"That wasn't an esper. That was a magician."

"…Hah?"

"Ma-gi-ci-an," Index pressed, separately emphasizing each part of the word.

"What's with you?" Misaka prodded Index's forehead with her own left index finger. "Did that terrorist kick something loose on that last hit or something?" Misaka shrugged. "That was totally an esper. In the first place, magicians don't even exist."

Index growled at Misaka. "They do! Magic and magicians really do exist!"

"Yeah, yeah, magic exists." Misaka's dismissive tone and hand-sweeping gesture completely belied her words. "So, Miss 'Magic Exists', do you have some convenient magic that'll help me track down that terrorist?"

"I do," Index shouted, puffing out her chest. She then produced her cellphone and turned it on.

The screen did not turn on.

Index pressed the on button again… and again… and again… and again. No screen had shown up, and no lights had appeared. The thing had broken after all. Index then growled at the thing and shook it exaggeratedly, but it still did not respond.

"And this is the part when you get on your knees and scream, 'Such misfortune!' Right, Shorty?" The smugness in Misaka's voice did not improve Index's mood at all.

"Don't assign that Touma-like behavior to me, Tanpatsu!"

Misaka then placed her left palm over her right eye in a show of exasperation. She then extended her right palm toward Index. "Hand it over," Misaka ordered.

"What?"

"The cellphone."

Index did so. Misaka fiddled with the cellphone's buttons for a few seconds… and then, using her prodding finger, sent a tiny trickle of electricity into the underside. With a victorious look on her face, she pushed the screen side of the phone into Index's eyesight. The phone was on, screen, lights, and all!

"The battery just ran dry," Misaka explained. "Seriously, what were you doing? You're supposed to let these things charge. Letting the charge go out completely reduces the maximum amount of power the battery can hold, you know."

Index could feel the blood rushing to her face. Oddly enough, this had something of a rejuvenating effect on her. "I… I knew that!" She then calmed down and focused on the map. They were still a fair distance from School District 10, and the prospect of someone on the level of Misaka Mikoto intercepting and stalling their target again was slim. "The suspect's headed toward District 10."

"How do you know?" asked Misaka.

"I overheard some people from Judgment," Index replied, "Shirai Kuroko and another girl."

"Kuroko?" Shirai was Misaka's underclassman and roommate.

"It's a long story," Index responded, cutting off her line of inquiry. "First, we need to find some quicker way to District 10."

Misaka sighed. "You could've said something about District 10 earlier if you knew." After a rueful shaking of the head, she whipped out her own cellphone, a stereotypically girly pink one with a childish frog-mascot strap on the underside, and rapidly pushed a series of buttons.

"What now?" Index asked, seeing the other girl retract her phone.

"We get back to the streets and wait at the next intersection. Follow me."

* * *

The wind vanes had taken Index further off the road path than she had realized. Noon had passed before the two of them were able to find an intersection, and nearly a half-hour passed before an available automated transport bus was available for usage. (That, Index realized somewhat belatedly, was the reason for Misaka's telephone call.)

It felt good, Index thought, to be finally off her feet.

"So," Misaka asked, "what's this 'long story' with Kuroko?"

"Shirai-san was attacked," Index recalled, "by that magician. But she should be all right. She should be in the hospital."

"Should be?" Misaka turned to Index. "Wait, what happened? Were you there?"

"They took the fight… to Touma's apartment," Index said. "They just crashed through the apartment… and then Shirai-san…"

Misaka shook her head. "I'd ask you what you were doing in his apartment – that's for boys, you know – but now isn't the time."

"Hey, Tanpatsu," Index asked after a moment's silence.

"What's with you guys and silly nicknames? I have a proper name, you know. Misaka Mikoto. Mi-sa-ka-Mi-ko-to."

"Then, Misaka Mikoto," Index pressed on, undeterred. "Why were you fighting against that magician? You don't even have that armband, so you can't be part of Judgment. You're an esper with no conventional weaponry to speak of, so you can't be with Anti-Skill. You were alone without backup, so you couldn't be part of Multi Active Rescue either. You couldn't be out for revenge for your class junior because you didn't even know until I told you. You're a civilian member of this city, so there was no reason to put yourself on the line. So why?"

Misaka leaned back on her seat and turned her gaze to the bus's low ceiling. "No special reason. I saw a suspicious person tearing her way through the cops and decided to jump in and lend a hand. That's it."

Index merely stared at Misaka in response.

"What? Did I give you a wrong answer or something?"

"Not really," Index shrugged.

Another moment's silence passed between the two of them. Yet again, it was Misaka who broke the stalemate.

"Thanks," she said, smiling at Index warmly for the first time in the entire day.

"Thanks. For what?"

"For saving Kuroko. She can be a total weirdo at times, but she's a good kid at heart."

"You don't need to thank me for something like that," Index responded.

* * *

Around 1:30 PM, they finally made it to School District 10. Peacekeepers of various affiliations swarmed the northern entrance and checked everyone who wished to enter. Index, who did not want to face the authorities just yet, leaped off the train before it reached the official checkpoint. To her surprise, Misaka followed.

"What are you doing?" Index asked her.

Misaka shuffled her feet uneasily. "Well, I did kind of take out those windmills, so…" She trailed off. "Anyway, let's continue our search." As the two of them ran southward, Misaka quickly whipped out her cellphone and furiously dialed her way through a series of buttons. "Come on, pick up, pick up, pick up…"

Misaka visibly relaxed the tension in her shoulders and took a deep breath. "Uiharu-san? It's Misaka…" She paused. "Yeah, I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking." She paused and listened again. "Yeah, I already heard about Kuroko… She's at the hospital and will be all right? That's such a relief… Actually, I need you to do me a favor…"

Index could barely keep pace with the still-energetic Misaka and could thus concentrate only on snippets of the conversation. When Misaka finally ended the call, Index could only ask, "What now, Tanpatsu?"

"Another Judgment branch fell silent," Misaka explained. "Their last reported location was an abandoned energy research lab south-to-southwest of our position, so we'll have to take a detour. If can we get there fast enough ourselves, maybe we can find clues to lead us to the perp."

Index gave a curt nod and, trusting the other girl implicitly, simply followed her.

* * *

When Misaka said that the target area was abandoned, she was not joking.

The four-story former laboratory reminded Index of a desiccated, hollowed-out corpse. The outside of it was a very dark shade of grey, the kind of color that heavily implied destruction by fire damage or an explosion. In contrast to this somber color, a medley of green and bluish-colored hanging plants of varying species crisscrossed the perimeter of the building. The lawn around the building had been unkempt as well, and the grass grew long enough to completely cover both girls' feet and some of their lower legs as well.

The two girls picked their way through this grass and entered what they presumed was the front door. As soon as they did so, a thick, heavy, iron-like odor filled their senses. Index could instantly tell the smell.

"Blood," said Index to Misaka. "This whole place has the smell of blood."

Misaka tensed up. "Stay close to me."

As they picked their way through the ruins, they happened upon a roomy interior area that once served as either a lobby or a cafeteria. Directly above their position, they could hear the echoing sounds of two pairs of footsteps other than their own.

"Did you hear that?" Index asked Misaka.

Misaka nodded in confirmation. "We should get upstairs."

Finding their way upstairs was easy. Index and Misaka needed only backtrack to the point of entry, wherein there was a serviceable staircase leading upwards – serviceable being the operative word here, for as soon as Index stepped on the final stair, it collapsed, forcing Misaka to pull her up. Now that they had a better idea of where to go, the two girls quickly made their way to the source of the footsteps…

The deafening peal of a gunshot rang out, accompanied by a throaty female scream of agony. Index did not know much about guns, but she did remember the sound that the violet magician's personal arms made. This was not it; the sound was much more powerful and pronounced, perhaps indicating a weapon larger and with higher destructive power than the handgun.

Misaka made a reckless dash in the direction of the gunshot sound, and Index could do naught but follow.

The scientists' quarters in which the two girls found themselves housed a horror show for which they had to steel themselves.

Upon looking down at her feet, Misaka held her mouth in order to avoid retching on the spot. The bloodied bodies of four Judgment members – all but one of them female – lay on the floor, the telltale circular wounds on their heads indicating that they had, indeed, been blown away with a high-powered weapon. At the other end of the room, cowering behind what remained of a bunk-bed set, a fifth person, male, likely adolescent, pointed his firearm – which indeed had a much longer barrel length, confirming Index's suspicions – at the two.

"Why, you… were you the one behind all this?" Misaka shouted, completely fearless of the large gun the other person wielded. "Get out from under there before I force you out!"

The gunman rose slowly in response, allowing Index to get a better look at him. He was a pitiful wreck of a boy, with his shaggy, matted, short blond hair sitting haphazardly on his head. He wore a brown hoodie and blue jeans, and he had a manic, tear-, snot-, and saliva-filled expression of fear on his face as he continued to train the gun on the nun and esper. Index could feel an overwhelming aura of horribly distorted magic life force, the likes of which she had never felt before, emanating from this poor boy.

"I'm just a… just a… Level 0 after all…" he moaned. "A Skill-Out… an unneeded existence…" He made a pitiful show of steadying his weapon, even as tears clouded his eyes and presumably his sight. "You… you're from the Board of Directors, aren't you? AREN'T YOU? What did we… what did we go all the way to Russia for, huh? ANSWER ME!"

"You're not making any sense!" Misaka shouted. "I'm not from the Board of Directors or whatever, so just put that rifle down already!"

"It's useless, Tanpatsu," Index shouted, hiding behind Misaka. "There's a powerful curse affecting this person!"

"A curse? You can't be serious!"

"SHUT UP, DAMN YOU!" ordered the gunman. He did not give them a chance to shut up. He fired a shot directly at the nun, only to have it forcibly deflected off its course by a shield of electromagnetic energy. Undaunted, the Skill-Out locked and loaded for another shot, but Misaka sent a powerful jolt of electricity back at him before he could fire again. The Skill-Out boy violently convulsed for a few seconds before finally collapsing to the floor along with the dead and dropping his weapon.

"Who would lay such a powerful curse on him?" After confirming that he was not going to get up and try attacking a third time, Index ran to the blond and examined his limp body.

"What are you—" Index's glare cut off Misaka's question.

"There should be a curse mark somewhere on his body, something like a tattoo, signifying the nature of the curse," Index explained.

"That's ridiculous. He was just under a hallucination of some sort. You know, from breathing in all the plant waste around here or mental manipulation by an enemy esper or…"

"Found it," Index said. "What a relief. I thought I might have had to strip-search him…"

Ignoring the shade of red Misaka's face turned due to the mental imagery, Index examined the marking of the front of the neck. It was small, placed around the boy's throat area. The small tattoo was a pitch-black rendition of a symbol of some kind enclosed within a circle. The symbol itself was a line that ran straight through the middle of the circle lengthwise just before stopping at the upper tip. Branching out from this line were a series of six smaller lines, three on each side for purposes of symmetry, protruding out from the parent line. Index realized that it was a stylistic representation of a tree.

Index then grabbed a branch of overgrowth from the outside wall, dipped the branch's tip in the blood of the rifle victims, and began tracing the symbol found on the Skill-Out onto the wall behind him.

"Give me a proper explanation here," Misaka demanded. "You're totally creeping me out."

"Quiet," Index said evenly in response. "I'm trying to get to the bottom of all this."

After finishing her macabre wall artwork, she planted one of the safety pins holding up her outfit onto the direct center of the bloody circle. _**"Open."**_

As soon as she finished saying this, a wall perpendicular to Index's started to emit a ghastly black radiance that threatened to suck all light from the room. The black gleam just as suddenly turned into a bright green that forced Index and Misaka to shield their eyes before it stabilized into a lime-green replica of the symbol on the wall.

"It worked," Index said. "I had to wing it a bit there, using the corrupted mana from the environment and an alternate form of Spell Intercept. If I had to process my own life force to release the seal on the barrier, it would have gone badly for me."

"What are you talking about? What's going on here? Why am I out of the loop all of a sudden?" Misaka tapped her feet in irritation.

Index took a deep breath. This was like dealing with Kamijou in his more obtuse moments all over again. "Whatever did this to these children is on the other side of this seal."

Misaka cracked her knuckles. "So we go in, find out whoever or whatever's behind all this, and crush them, huh? Finally, something simple!"

While Index had hoped that the teenage genius behind her could find better words for her sentiments, she also realized that they would likely have to defeat what was on the other end of the seal anyway. So she nodded.

Without further preamble, Index Librorum Prohibitorum and Misaka Mikoto climbed into the symbol…

* * *

Index and Misaka fell through the symbol on the other side… and fell some ten feet from the sky before landing clumsily on top of each other.

When they regained their wits, they looked at themselves… and saw that their forms were stylized, two-dimensional… paper cutouts? They looked around and saw that they were in an expanse of forest, with the "trees" heavily resembling children's crayon drawings of trees. They heard what sounded like children playing and singing along happily in the background, but they could see no children – or indeed anyone other than themselves.

"What the Hell is this?" the two-dimensional Misaka asked, continuing to stare at herself in utter disbelief. "What kind of mental manipulation is this? Whose Personal Reality would be this twisted? Is this some kind of AIM Field corruption or something?" A spark of electricity flashed between her eyes. "No, this can't be a mental illusion, because I'd be immune to it…"

"Throwing around a bunch of scientific terminology isn't going to help," Index retorted.

"A scientific explanation would be better than just fumbling around in the dark like this!"

Index grunted in sheer annoyance. "Let's keep moving. If we explore, this should shed some more light on our situation."


	3. The Third Spell – Index III

"_I have something I need to accomplish in this city."_

"_Whatever did this to these children is on the other side of this seal."_

"_Whose Personal Reality would be this twisted?"_

* * *

**To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari**

The Third Spell – Index Librorum Prohibitorum III

* * *

The two girls, Index Librorum Prohibitorum and Misaka Mikoto, slowly and cautiously threaded their way through the surreal sea of two-dimensional "trees". Misaka, as the one with actual firepower at her disposal, had taken point, while Index had followed behind her closely. Even so, as she was walking, Index was busy absorbing her surroundings, all five of her senses – and her sixth sense of magic – on their fullest alert. As the two moved across the forest, the "grass" beneath their feet crackled loudly and unnaturally, as if being fed to a flame rather than merely being stepped on. Meshing with this distinctly unnatural sound was the atmosphere of chanting and cheering in the background, which remained unintelligible even as the volume and tempo slowly but steadily intensified, further adding to their unease.

Suddenly, Misaka stopped walking, causing Index to bump into her.

"Don't suddenly stop like th—!" Index's protest was silenced when Misaka abruptly placed a finger on her lips.

"If we keep wandering around like this," Misaka said, turning her eyes upward, "we're going to get nowhere fast. Let's climb on top of one of these trees and see if we can't get a better view of this place."

"That might be a good idea," Index affirmed. She then picked the tree directly ahead of her and began climbing.

"Ah, wait! I didn't mean you!" Index could hear Misaka protesting. "Hey, can you even climb in that outfit?"

Deliberately choosing to ignore her, Index carefully began scaling the tree. The unrefined, childlike approximation of tree bark felt chilly, clammy, lifeless to the touch, and the nearly frictionless surface prompted Index to be especially careful as she climbed upward. Some thirty feet upwards, she had grasped a branch protruding from the side of the tree. The branch provided some small measure of support for further climbing but offered no vantage of point of view in itself, so continue her ascent she did.

She had climbed some eighty feet in the air when she finally reached the canopy. Directly ahead of her and to her immediate sides, the "forest" extended as far as the human eye could see. Only when she turned around did she find out that she and Misaka were heading the wrong way from the beginning, and that what was likely to be their destination lay at their backs.

Behind her, Index could see a massive structure in the distance. Given the four rectangular tower structures, each with a white flag on top of it, ringing a central, massive spiral tower at the center, Index at first thought it was a castle, not unlike what one would find in mid-medieval continental Europe during the Norman conquests. However, upon a more thorough inspection, she observed that each of the castle's towers, all four outer ones and the inner one, possessed a spinning wind rotor on the side facing Index, a sight fairly common to Academy City (despite its inland location) but incomprehensibly bizarre in a world where no discernible winds blew. Try as she did, Index could not immediately grasp the significance of these structures and thus resolved to go to this castle and take a closer look.

As soon as she resolved to go back down the tree, however, she witnessed a fiery explosion send the central tower crashing thunderously to the ground. The shock nearly caused her to lose her footing, but she steadied herself and made her way down.

"Hey, Shorty," Misaka said, once Index had safely touched ground. "I heard something hit the ground hard going on from behind us. I think we've been heading the wrong way."

"We were," Index agreed. "I think we should hurry up and go to that castle."

"Castle?"

"There's a castle in the distance behind us," Index confirmed, pointing in that direction. "It might well contain the source of this distorted mana."

"Then we should get going," Misaka said hurriedly. "Staying here is giving me all kinds of chills."

* * *

When Index and Misaka finally arrived at the castle seen in the distance, they discovered before them an imposing structure whose detailed stonework and towering battlements stood in stark contrast to the cartoonish nature of everything else they had seen in this world up to this point. Initially arriving at one of the castle's sides, the duo had to scurry around to the entrance. Once there, they saw, strung across the edges of the castle's battlements, a series of dark-blue rectangular panels tethered together by cords of a sickly greenish color.

"What are these?" Index asked herself aloud. "I've never seen such magical devices as these…"

"What do you mean by 'magical devices'?" Misaka retorted, breaking Index's concentration. The confusion and fearful uncertainty in her voice fatally undermined what was likely another attempt at sarcasm. "These are solar panels!"

"Solar… panels?"

"You know… those things which capture and store sunlight and convert it to usable energy?" After another second's worth of inaction, Misaka then reached out her hand. In response, one of the mysterious panels ripped itself from the wall and floated into Misaka's hand… whereupon it made a sizzling noise and Misaka's hand jerked away from it on reflex.

"Are you all right?" Index asked.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," Misaka said hurriedly while she examined the solar panel (this time from a remove while levitating the panel using her powers). "Now I remember where I saw these things. Yeah, these are the Hyperion models, from that one green energy conference I had to attend with my dad a few years back. These things used an experimental virus engineered by an American institute affiliated with Academy City that perfectly spaced apart the carbon nanotubes inside, thus substantially increasing the efficiency of energy conversion and retention…"

Index folded her arms and grunted in annoyance again. The other girl might as well have been speaking a foreign language for all she could understand. "So answer me this, Tanpatsu. What is such an obviously scientific device doing in such an obviously magical labyrinth?"

"More to the point," Misaka shot back, "what are these doing here anyway? And those propellers up there, for that matter… There's nothing even resembling a sun or wind out—"

As if in timely answer to Misaka's line of questioning, the wind propellers on the sides of the outside castle towers dramatically sped up their rotation. Precisely one second later, the chanting in the background went silent, only to be replaced by a shrill, ear-piercing cacophony that was half scream and half alarm claxon. Just above Index's eyesight, she saw the half-collapsed innermost tower, destroyed in the explosion she witnessed at the treetop, warp and reform itself into a stone-grey drill structure, with the pointy end "drilling" upwards. Rectangular cavities opened up, one-by-one with the impeccable timing of a machine, in the outer walls; and as each one opened up, one of the solar panels retracted into it. The one Misaka ripped from the walls automatically reattached itself to the grid and retracted into the wall alongside its brethren, much to the surprise of both girls. The sickly lime-green cords that once connected the panels together extruded out from under the wall, split into multiple interlocking strands (three to a pattern, a triple-helix), and drilled themselves powerfully into the ground, each of them exerting the force of a fully-powered pile driver.

Aqua-blue symbols then flashed through the nodes on the panels like the different sections of a singular bulletin board system. With her experience in magical languages, Index could instantly recognize these symbols as runes; but before she could analyze this, a gleam of blinding light briefly flashed from the direction of the farthest tower to the right. Without any further warning than this, a gigantic bolt of lightning slammed into the open space between that tower and the one nearest Index's position. The area struck instantly caught fire, as evidenced by the plumes of smoke rising up from in front of the tower and the sudden flush of heat that Index could feel.

"Did you see that?" asked Misaka. Index nodded; and as soon as she did, the taller girl reached into her skirt pocket and produced a shiny, round, metallic object that Index could only guess was some kind of currency. Balancing said coin on her left thumb, she balled her left hand into a fist, flicked said coin into the air with her index finger…

"What are you doing, Tanpatsu?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Misaka retorted, a nimbus of agitated electrons surrounding her. "I'm going to blow this freak show to pieces!"

True to her words, she flicked the coin right at the tower from which the light originated. The coin transformed before Index's eyes into a brilliant orange beam of light which sheared perfectly through the broad side of the targeted tower, toppling it on contact, as if the flaming sword of the archangel Michael had ascended back into the Heavens from which it had come after serving its purpose of guarding the Garden of Eden. In response to this, a pitch-black mass of… _something…_ not so much flowed as _bled _speedily in its advance toward the direction of the two girls.

Moving ahead of Index protectively, Misaka tensed up and readied a second coin. "Stay close to me," she ordered, "and get ready to run. This could get ugly."

"Run? Where to?" Index asked, looking behind her. Another black mass was heading her way from the position from which they had come and quickly cutting off any escape routes. When Misaka checked behind her to see what Index was staring at, she instantly blanched and nearly fumbled her coin.

"This isn't good!" Misaka breathed. "It's thicker outside than inside!"

"We'll have to go further in," Index said. "This labyrinth is attacking us directly. At this rate, if we don't get to more defensible ground, we'll be surrounded!"

With all other options rapidly closing to them, the two braved the entrance of the mysterious castle, wherein the "fog" was at its thinnest.

Upon arriving past the gate, they found themselves within the courtyard. Another mass of black bubbled up from within the well and attempted to overwhelm them, but Misaka neutralized it with a timely blast of her electrical powers. This brief respite gave the two of them the chance to examine just what the black fog was composed of. When the two of them did so, they spotted that the black fog was comprised of a mass of grasshopper-like insects, with each individual insect possessing runes where its eyes were supposed to have been and double-bladed miniature scythes in place of legs. Other than the runes and blades, and the unnaturally dark coloring, Index could immediately identify what these insects were.

"Locusts," Index said. "These are desert locusts."

"What the Hell?" Misaka asked, just before flash-frying another surprise uprising of said insects that had tried to ambush them.

"The locusts are not all that strange," Index explained as she continued running. "These insects show up a lot within the Holy Scriptures. They were a sign of God's judgment on nations of plenty who refused to follow His precepts. One of the plagues of Egypt was a massive swarm of locusts. St. John the Baptist was said to have subsisted on locusts during his time in the wilderness, though that's a mistranslation. And one of the plagues in the Book of Revelations is—"

"Yeah, well, we're pretty far from the desert," Misaka cut in, "so what are they doing here?"

"They're this labyrinth's familiars," Index responded. "If we can reverse-engineer the process by which these familiars operate, then we can find and attack the labyrinth's source."

"You can do something like that?"

Index quickly stole an aside glance at the still-scrolling display on the solar panels. "Yeah, I can, but it'll take some time to decipher the necessary information."

"In case you haven't noticed, 'time' is one thing we don't have a lot of!"

"I know that!" Index shot back; but before she could continue her retort, she sensed a massive surge of the labyrinth's distorted mana coalescing and gathering into a pinprick-sized spot above them. A quick look upwards revealed that the leaden-grey clouds of the sky had split open to reveal a circular gap in the sky, through which Index could have sworn she had seen the fires of Hell. Upon witnessing magical force build up within that sky, she had a very good idea of what was coming.

"Tanpatsu, get away from there NOW!"

"Buh…?"

"MOVE!"

Misaka obeyed Index's urgent command, and not a second too soon. Another lightning blast soundlessly flash-fried Misaka's former position and blew the two girls off their feet. The sudden flash of energy and subsequent wave of searing heat ripped Index's consciousness from her in the blink of an eye.

* * *

Index had the look and air of a petite, fragile girl of subnormal constitution, but she was made of sterner stuff than first glances would reveal. Not every girl could run from rooftop to rooftop in a crowded Japanese residential district on the run from professional magicians, after all. Even so, Index had to will her way past a wall of pain covering her entire body from the head down simply to get back to her feet. The pain was not entirely due to acute injuries; she was developing a headache from lack of food. She did not eat nearly as much as her prodigious appetite would allow, due to her emotional state earlier in the morning; and her unsatisfied, undernourished body was running against its limits.

"I'm… hungry…" she could not help but moan softly enough (or at least she hoped) that no one but herself would hear.

When she took a look at her surroundings, she found herself inside a cramped, circular interior room of stone. Destroyed husks of the "solar panel"-like magical tools littered the floors and covered Index up to her shins. Above her, she saw two triangular windows, one to the right of and below the other. To her back lay an upward-curving spiral staircase, and before her lay a wall of fire taller than her which barred entry outside. The walls themselves pulsated with the oily-colored panel connectors, which writhed in place free from their moorings. If she wanted to move past this point, her options now were to advance further into the labyrinth, brave the obstacles of stone and fire guarding the exit, or stay and perish from the familiars or the lightning.

And speaking of lightning…

Index glanced around and looked for Misaka. Surely enough, the esper was struggling to her feet as well… but was hunched over, with her right hand pressing against her chest.

"Are you all right?" Index asked as she hurried to her companion.

"Not… good…" Misaka wheezed. "That last one must have opened the wound."

It took only the briefest of instances for Index to recall the shot to the chest Misaka had suffered during her fight with the magician in violet. At the time, Misaka had seemingly rolled with the blow and shrugged the wound off, leading Index to assume that she had been fortunate enough to avoid being seriously injured. Now, it was evident that such was not the case.

"Why didn't you tell me about that earlier?" Index asked her accusingly even as she helped her to her feet. When Misaka's arm moved away, Index could now clearly see a widening line of red discoloring the brown of her tattered school jacket and shirt.

"Sorry," Misaka apologized. "It didn't seem… like a deal-breaker at the time… What was that last one? Electromasters are normally immune to lightning…"

"Magic follows a different set of rules from science," Index said. "Lightning and firestorms are manifestations of God's wrath and thus cannot be controlled by scientific laws."

Misaka moved her mouth to speak, but then clenched her teeth and wrested herself away from Index. A nimbus of electrical energy surrounded Misaka even as she attempted to steady herself without Index's support. Index, whose eyes were turned toward Misaka, had to follow the other girl's forward gaze before she could understand what had agitated the electric princess so.

The magician in violet walked into the tower they were in, her dark silhouette standing in sharp contrast to the bright glow of the flames surrounding her. Two thin trails of blood crisscrossed her face and converged at a reddened welt on her forehead. Her right arm hung limply at her side, and as she walked, she was clearly forced to favor her right leg. The gem on her left sleeve had lost its previous luster and was instead dimmed with a dull, darkened sheen. Her own familiar, the creature called Kyuubey, slowly kept pace with the violet magician, seemingly heedless of the wounds that were accumulating on its own body.

Even so, her emotionless expression and dark, piercing eyes still managed to instill within Index a sense of menace.

"So you found your way inside this witch's labyrinth, while chasing me, I suppose," she said as she advanced on the two of them. "I was wondering why the witch had suddenly decided to strike elsewhere, but now I know."

"It's you!" Misaka snarled. "You're the one behind all this, aren't you?"

"Don't be silly," the violet magician said, her voice's apparent lack of emotion contrasting with the venom in Misaka's. "Do you think I'm so masochistic as to do all this to myself? Or do you think I'd go all out of my way to falsify these injuries just to lure in a couple of schoolgirls? Quite the self-centered outlook you have there."

"Why, you…" Misaka responded through clenched teeth. "I'm going to make you pay for what you did to Kuroko!"

"Kuroko?" The magician tilted her head to the right in a show of confusion. "Who was that? Judging by that outfit of yours, I would imagine it was the irritatingly persistent one with the twin tails…"

"Why?" Index spoke up softly, so as to deliberately cut through the ugly atmosphere between the electric princess and mystery magician. "Why are you attacking Academy City? Is it revenge for World War III? Did Academy City do something to your magical cabal? Were you the one who laid that curse on those children? Answer me!"

"World War… III? Magical… cabal?" She still maintained the look of confusion on her face, and the sarcastic edge that was present in her goading had softened somewhat, a gesture that Index did not miss.

When the other party did not respond, Misaka spoke up again. "It's useless talking to her! Stand back. You can interrogate her all you want after I kick her ass!"

"You really remind me of someone…" the enemy muttered, the irritation in her own face beginning to show through the cracks in her until-then flawless composure. "Rather than trying to track me down, shouldn't you be worried about getting out of here? If this witch is not stopped, its plague of death and destruction will spread across your precious city while you rot within its bowels. Do you really want that?"

"Witch?" Index asked, deliberately cutting in once more to keep her accomplice's growing blind battle lust in check. Witches were mentioned many times within the library of books that comprised the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, across multiple cultures; and all of those cultures ascribed different functions and powers to those branded with the term. There were witches whose seductions and prophecies brought down entire principalities and nations; witches who ate the flesh of children to perpetuate their own youth; witches who were feared for their ability to control disease and illness in the times long before the advent of scientific knowledge; "witches" who simply had the misfortune of knowing and obtaining more than women of their station were allowed; and so many more. The term thus, to her, begged far more questions than it did answer any.

"When you say a 'witch,' does that mean that there's a witch at the center of this labyrinth, controlling everything?"

"_That's not correct," _a voice responded in her head. _"What she is trying to say is that the 'labyrinth' as you call it is the witch itself. Though I have only her word to take for it…"_

"Kyuubey," the magician said, casting an aside glance at the white familiar-like creature on the ground next to her. "You're saying too much…"

"The labyrinth is the witch itself…" Index repeated aloud. She then turned to Misaka. "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, of course, I did!" she responded heatedly. "This bitch just admitted to trying to kill Kuroko!"

"No, not that! The labyrinth and the witch…"

Now it was Misaka's turn to wear the confused look on her face. "What's this about witches? More occult stuff?"

_She can't hear it,_ Index figured out. She then turned to the other magician. "The one who penetrated this barrier was none other than I, Index Librorum Prohibitorum. I have some idea of how this 'witch' works. If I can just piece together the runes attached to the familiars, then it's likely I can come up with a countermeasure to effectively destroy it and free us all. But I cannot do it alone. I need someone to protect me as I analyze these symbols and decode their message.

"I know I'm asking for a lot," she continued, "especially from a magician. But I can tell… I can tell that you weren't the one behind this. If I had to make an educated guess, I would guess that your magic was purposed from the ground up to combat monsters such as this! If nothing else, that jewel on your arm reacted to this phenomenon long before I detected it!"

At this, the magician in violet flinched and, perhaps on instinct, reached into her shield.

"That's not all!" Index pressed forward, undeterred by the mystery magician's withering stare. "Upon detecting this, you immediately changed course in the middle of a combat, putting whatever plans you had on hold and charging into the barrier by yourself!"

The magician gritted her teeth.

"That's not all either! Not once in any of our encounters did you show any signs of having to process mana like other magicians! Your activations were instantaneous, without any need for invocation or processing of magical energy." Not merely content with just standing her ground, Index took a step forward and spoke her conclusion decisively. "You're not a magician who makes use of magical devices. Your body itself is the magical device… while you yourself, the real you, is externalized and manifested inside that gem! You modified your own body in order to build yourself into the perfect weapon to fight these 'witches'!"

At that, the magician in violet dashed forward at breakneck speed and clutched her petite, but inhumanly powerful left arm around Index's neck, lifting her off the ground and threatening to obstruct her air supply at her leisure if she so chose. Misaka, in response, immediately readied a spear of electricity, but Index managed to shake her head, a gesture that meant not to interfere for the time being.

"You're mostly right, Sister," the magician said, staring up at the girl in her power. "Your little analysis is right, but just barely missed the mark. 88 out of 100, I would say. Indeed, I am something other than 'human'. I'll also tell you something else: This witch is unlike any other that I've ever fought before."

Index's eyes opened further in shock at this candid admission.

"It's not quite on the level of _Walpurgisnacht_," the magician continued, "at least in terms of sheer attack strength and magnitude of corruption and in the fact that it still requires a barrier. But it's its own danger all on its own. It can regenerate whatever attacks are thrown at it and absorb its own structure to strengthen and repair itself. That tower you shredded, incidentally, has already been restored to full capacity." She emphasized the last sentence with an aside glance at Misaka.

"Much like an embryo, it comes fully equipped with all of the energy and nutrients it needs to survive. It does not need to infect to survive, unlike the other witches. Destroying its familiars has proven useless, as it directly harnesses the destructive energy needed to harm it to revive itself. We would need to find the witch's core, but it hides itself well. If we do not find the core, anything else is meaningless. And you think you, who have been bumbling around this maze ineffectually, can succeed where I, who by your own deductions has been created to fight these monstrosities, have failed, Sister?"

The pressure applied to her neck precluded a vocal answer, so Index instead lifted her arms and attempted to squeeze the magician's lifting arm. Her feeble arms could apply no pressure, but she let go regardless. Index collapsed to her knees and had to force her way back up. But when she did, she spoke clearly.

"I _know_ I can succeed," Index answered her resolutely. "But I can't do it alone. If you can still fight, I need your help. That goes for Misaka-san as well."

"Hmph…" The violet magician shot Misaka one last glare before returning her attention to Index. "Normally, I would ask you what kind of guarantee I'd have that the two of you wouldn't try anything funny, but it seems that this conversation is now over." With a sweeping hand gesture, she directed Index's attention to the barrier of magic energy that kept the familiars and firestorms at bay. The lavender corona of energy flickered on and off, like a flashlight draining the last of its battery reserve. "The shield I erected has lost its power. If we're going to strike, we must strike immediately. What awaits us from this point onward is either victory or annihilation."

* * *

Not even a second after the shield at last dissipated, a cloud of the black locust-creatures swarmed their way into the tower in force… only to find themselves instantly incinerated by a well-timed cascade of explosions and entombed in the tower's collapse.

* * *

Escaping the crumbling tower through an open window in the second floor, the three girls sprinted in a tight formation, with Misaka and the magician taking point and the slower Index and Kyuubey bringing up the rear. With their way to the embattled ground floor thus gone, they dashed along the walls connecting the towers, and they stopped only briefly at intervals to allow Index to engrave the runes lining the walls into her memory before they unmercifully destroyed them. During their travels, a shot of lightning crushed a section of the walls into so much debris and blocked their way forward. With an army of locusts at their back and a newly-made cliff at the hold, Misaka and Index were trapped… until Misaka used her powers to magnetically bond together a "staircase" of discarded panels. (The magician could fly.)

Upon analysis of the runes, Index discovered that the "theme" of the witch was deceptively simple. The modern trappings were an ingenious evolution, using the instruments of the science side to help sustain its prodigious appetite even while hiding its true magical nature. But aside from that, they were largely superfluous as to the true meaning. At its core, the runes throughout the castle pieced together a narrative of a woman who had been secluded and sheltered from society at the behest of cruel men who wished, however misguidedly, to guard her innocence and virtue. Admired by all around her for her beauty and intelligence, she was locked away by her wealthy, jealous father until she could be married off. While in captivity, she had seen the truth and converted to the Way of the Cross. In secret, she specifically gave orders to her servants that her private bathhouse be made with three windows (in reverence to the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) rather than her father's two. This act of devotion to her Heavenly Father enraged her earthly one, who, upon confirming his daughter's conversion, rushed to kill her with his own sword. The Son of God, answering her fervent prayers, bore her away through an open wall in her tower to a mountain, where she was happened upon by two shepherds. When her father chased after her, the first shepherd rebuffed him, but the second had betrayed her into his hands; for this, she invoked the Lord's curse on him. He turned into stone, and his flocks of sheep became locusts.

Her father brought her before the magistrate, who quickly convicted her of blaspheming the pagan gods and ordered her imprisoned, beaten, and killed. She was made to endure many tortures and indignities. She was beaten by the sinews of bulls. Her flesh was softened for the blows by rubbing salt in the wounds. She was drawn and hanged between trees. Staves broke her legs. The executioners cut off her breasts. Her father had eagerly dealt her the finishing blow; and as retribution, he was killed where he stood, struck down by lightning and consumed in flames.

The Roman Catholic Church canonized this woman, Barbara of Nicomedia, in the eighth century. She became the patron saint of many purviews – artillerymen, cannoneers, prisoners, window-makers, young girls, and indeed anyone who potentially faced sudden death while doing their duty. She was invoked against fire and lightning.

Index, who was a walking encyclopedia due to the religious and heretical books and grimoires implanted into her mind, was able to cross-reference this information immediately. From then on, it was a simple matter of placing where they were in the narrative. If they could do so, then finding "Barbara" (the witch itself) would be simple… theoretically. The problem with that simple solving pattern was that the divine wrath of lightning at the end of the story coexisted co-temporally with the divine punishment of the locusts within the witch. "Barbara" could not be in any of the castle's towers, because if she were, then she would have doubtless responded to the relentless assault of the other two girls. Her next thought was that perhaps the witch had hidden herself within a range of mountains, as per the analogous point in the legend, but that too was unlikely. She would have seen the mountain range during her time on the treetops in the distance, unless it was specifically cloaked… in which case the locusts would have originated from this theoretical mountain range, which was apparently not the case. Even so, while improbable, the "mountain" theory was not entirely impossible. Come to think of it, the divine energy that could be tapped into by reenacting the tale of St. Barbara should have been on the theoretical level incompatible with the defiling force the witch gave off… which led Index back to believing that the witch was not just mimicking, but actively corrupting one vital theme of the original legend to sustain itself.

Just as she thought that, she heard Misaka yelp in pain and saw her cover her face in response to stray shards of glass from the latest round of enemy fire.

_Wait a minute…_

_Glass…_

_Windows…_

_Two triangular windows, one to the right of and above the other._

_The legend had mandated three windows in reverence to the Spirit._

"Of course… the tower windows…" Index said aloud in mid-run. "Why didn't I see it before?"

_"That's quite the interesting face you have there,"_ Kyuubey said. "_Have you found something out? If so, please feel free to share. Even I can't keep this up forever…"_

"The tower windows!" Index screamed out.

"I said destroying them was useless!" the magician snapped.

Index shook her head. "No, not like that! You have to _carve another window into each of the towers_!"

Both of the other girls did a double-take, glancing at each other and then at Index in rapid succession.

"There are two windows on the uppermost floor of each tower!" she explained. "One of them is to the right of and above the other! There are supposed to be three windows, one to signify each facet of the Holy Trinity! In the original legend, St. Barbara the Martyr had her private chambers fitted with three windows to represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in defiance of her pagan father, who wanted only two! It sounds like a long shot, but if we can make changes and mess with the symbolism, then we can stem the flow of energy to the witch and force it to reveal itself!"

"What an annoying story…" Misaka muttered.

"So, do you have any precision tools in that electric arsenal of yours?" asked the magician in that subdued tone Index had begun to associate with her. "Or are you just some glorified stun-gun?"

"I don't want to hear about 'precision' from someone who guns her way through police once she gets caught!" Even with that retort, Misaka stretched out her hand. Three arcs of lightning shot forth from her outstretched hand and drilled into the side of the nearest tower. Instead of smashing into it and destroying it as before, the electricity lances carved into the stone like a welder. The lances briefly faltered, and Index thought she heard a disturbingly wet-sounding cough coming from the Electromaster. She opened her mouth to ask if Misaka was well, but then a bloodcurdling shriek of despair sounded through the air.

The solar panels and locusts ringing the tower burst into bluish-white flames, one after another, in a frightening and deafening chain reaction. The sense of relief Index could feel was almost palpable… and fleeting. Likely sensing the danger their master now faced, the locust clouds of the other towers abandoned their previous posts and descended upon the trio _en masse_. Unable to evade or counterattack this fell miasma, grievously injured from their previous battles, and with their energies stretched to the breaking point, they could only await their ends.

Misaka, the Level 5 esper, put up a magnificent defense, but faltered when the wound on her chest reopened and forced her to her knees. The all-consuming locusts capitalized on this moment of weakness and swarmed her down.

The violet magician, defiant of the end, summoned her bow and fired frantically while desperately trying to force her legs to move from her spot. But for each cloud of locusts she cleared, many times that number would come and take the place of the fallen. Focused on the locusts as she was, one last bolt of "divine" lightning caught her off guard and struck her and her familiar creature down.

Index found herself the only one left. Glancing around frantically, she saw nothing but darkness surrounding the area like a funeral shroud. Fear and hunger together conspired to rob her of her will to resist. Within her mind lay hundreds of thousands of tools to save her from her predicament, but with her own ability to use her own powerful magical energies deliberately sealed away, she could not use any of them. She wanted to curse her uselessness – curse herself for ever having been born.

If all of the magic knowledge in the world throughout history could not be used to save even one person from the darkness, then perhaps that knowledge has lost its right to be perpetuated and passed down after all…

_Anyone can fight._

At the edges of Index's mind, as time seemed to slow to a crawl, she could hear a voice – the familiar voice of a certain boy. It was faint, ethereal, transitory, poised to fade away at any second.

_As long as you have something you wish to risk your life to protect…_

_Even if it makes the entire world your enemy…_

_You can fight!_

The conviction and hope in this person's voice briefly, if for a second, cut through the oncoming darkness like a beam of light. Index could not help but wonder – was this a spirit, come to guide the living in their time of need? Was it an illusion brought on by the fear of imminent death? Or was it…?

At the end of the light, Index could see, as if through a looking glass, a fell creature of despair, shattered hopes, and broken dreams. Where once its hands and feet were, a mass of cylindrical structures protruded from its arms and legs and stabbed into the ground. The cylindrical things pulsated as something flowed from its "arms" to its head. On that head was a crown whose shape reminded her of a castle's battlement; and on its body, runes were engraved that narrated a litany of oppression, torture, abuse, and finally destruction. On the spots where its eyes should have been, two fires black as night blazed unceasingly. The creature towered over the castle that once guarded it and glared furiously down at the remaining intruder, daring her to continue resisting right until the very end.

But Index was not afraid anymore, for _he_ was with her.

Index boldly took a step forward, unwavering in her resolve to fight. She took one last glance around for something, anything that could be used as a focus for her last stand. Next to the fallen magician's position, she saw her wooden bow, which had yet to dematerialize. Without hesitation, she picked it up.

By all accounts, this was a futile endeavor. Magicians were notoriously idiosyncratic and individualistic; and as a side effect, there was no guarantee that this magical tool was not locked and coded to respond to only its user's magical signature. While Index could break the code and take control of the magic, as she had before, she could only do so by intercepting the spell while the caster had done the hard work of inputting mana and commands into it. Index herself had no power to fuel magic, as a safety feature to keep her from using the grimoires stored within her mind and becoming an existential threat to the world herself.

Even so, she could not simply stand by and watch the others get devoured. Even if by some miracle she were saved herself, she would not be able to live it down if the others died. Someone had once refused to accompany her to the depths of Hell and instead, using nothing but his own fist and wits, had pulled her out. Now she fervently wished to pull the others out of this Hell…

She raised the bow at the level of the beast's head. Her vision was obscured by the descending locust clouds, but during that brief flash of light, she internalized the monster's position. She pulled the bowstring as hard as she could, but nothing came of it. No bolt of energy had materialized, and the first of the locusts had already begun to cut into her face with their scythe-like legs.

This was truly the end, it seemed…

"M… ma… do… k…"

Even in the midst of the witch's wailing and the locusts' buzzing, and even in the throes of her own pain, Index could hear the faint voice of the other magician. She could feel the touch of the magician's petite hand on her own legs… and she could feel a wave of energy not her own pulsing through her body. Seizing the moment, she reoriented herself and the magician's bow, deliberately ignoring the swarm of deadly insects. She then channeled all of this energy directly into the bow, refused the urge to avert her eyes as a blindingly bright pink light materialized in front of her face…

"I am Dedicatus545, the dedicated lamb that protects the knowledge of the strong!"

…and fired.

The pink beam of light shredded through the darkness, destroying all of the fell demons who dared cross its flight path, and struck the queen of the labyrinth head on. The cylindrical structures anchoring it to the ground severed one by one, with each of them leaking and bleeding a greenish-black substance that looked part blood, part oil, and part flame. The shrieking of the witch reached a fevered pace; the crown on its head shattered; and at last, the monster perished, screaming, in a conflagration of flame and lightning.

The pink light of the bow gave way to a pure white light which blinded and engulfed Index and the visage of the other girls.

* * *

When Index regained her sight, she found herself inside the same room from which she had entered the witch's barrier. The symbol she had traced into the wall to force the barrier open remained intact visually, but was now entirely bereft of any power; the analogous symbol she and Misaka used to actually enter was, perhaps unsurprisingly, gone without a trace of its existence. The blond Skill-Out was still alive but unconscious, as was his attacker, Misaka Mikoto, who was surrounded by a small pool of blood. The unfortunate schoolchildren of Judgment were still dead, though the lack of decay or smell, or, for that matter, the conspicuous absence of any of Academy City's law enforcement, led Index to believe that not much time had passed in the outside world while they were traversing the world inside the barrier.

While Index was searching the room for something to stem her fallen friend's blood loss, she found, near the spot of the barrier entrance, something she had missed on her first look-around. There lay a tiny, night-black jewel, with a princess cut on both sides, a stem/handle-like structure at the bottom, and the witch's tree motif in the center. Index started to take a closer look at this curious jewel, but then without warning, someone snatched it out of her hands. Looking up, she saw the magician touch the gem to her own purple one, which caused a two-way energy reaction between the black gem and hers and brightened her own gem's violet glow. This having been accomplished, she hesitated for a second, gripped the black gem as if to crush it, and then – wearing an expression of deciding something distasteful to her – tossed the black jewel to Kyuubey, who immediately consumed it through a maw-like opening on its back.

_"You're right, Homura. This truly does contain a prodigious amount of energy. So this is what you would call a 'Grief Seed'?"_

"Yes," she – her name was Homura? – responded quickly and somewhat acidly, refusing to look at the creature she just fed.

"So your name is Homura?" Index asked her. "That's… a strange name there."

"That is not something I want to hear from some weird foreign nun who calls herself an Index," Homura responded.

Index opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of a police alarm grabbed her attention. Homura made a "Tch" sound to voice her irritation. She then grabbed Index by the scruff of her neck and Kyuubey by its back.

"Wh—what's going on?" Index asked.

"We're getting out of here," Homura responded cleanly.

"What do you mean 'we'?" Index asked her in disbelief.

"Did I not make myself clear?" Homura asked her rhetorically. "You're coming with me." Brooking no further dissent, she activated her shield-like device. From Index's point of view, she could now see that the deceptively simple exterior of this magical device hid a patchwork of gears and wires surrounding a vial of sand. Upon activation, a gear slid into place and blocked the flow of sand; and in response, the world around the two turned stark grey. The gentle swaying of the plants surrounding the building stopped entirely, and no sound but the ones they made could be heard. Fluidly, with Index in tow, the magician named Homura glided through this world of grey and out the window. Looking down, Index could see a convoy of Anti-Skill vans and people in the midst of pouring out of them and swarming the laboratory. The members of the Anti-Skill squadron were all frozen in motion, allowing the two girls to skip through them with ease.

_It wasn't instantaneous movement at all,_ Index realized. _This girl has the ability to stop time!_

"But what about Misaka-san?" Index cried.

"I'll leave her to the police," Homura responded.

"Where are we going?" Index asked.

"Somewhere that isn't here."

Frustrated with the curt answers and at herself for being caught once again in a situation where she was powerless, Index then asked one last question.

"What are you doing in Academy City?"

At that question, Homura paused for the briefest of instances and turned her eyes toward Index. The two girls' faces met just inches away from each other. Homura stared into Index's eyes, as if peering into her very soul, which made Index more than a little uncomfortable. Then she turned away and continued her escape.

"A dear friend of mine has been abducted, and the few clues that I have point to this city. If you truly love this city as much as you claim to, you will assist me in finding her."

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED IN**

**To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari**

**The Fourth Spell – Akemi Homura I**

* * *

Author's Note:

Well, that's the end of the introductory arc. I hope you liked the story. As per usual for fanfiction, constructive criticism is welcome, while flames are not.

I would like to thank certain people for inspiring me to create this work:

The fine people at for translating the Index novels from Japanese to English and hosting them, free of charge, on their Website;

Flere821 and Fukou da, whose stories "Minds, Memories, and Misfortune" and "Unlucky Star" inspired me to write fanfiction for the first time in nearly a decade;

CaptainOverkill from the Beast Lair forums, a longtime friend of mine who proofread the work in mid-draft;

Juli "Chanoa" Hasegawa of DeviantArt, for answering one of my commissions and providing me with a lovely piece of commission artwork;

Random Unsigned 4chan Drawfag, for answering another commission with a nifty, albeit unfinished sketch;

Kamachi Kazuma and Urobuchi Gen, for providing us with their respective settings;

and finally, you, the reader.


	4. The Fourth Spell – Homura I

"_With kindness comes naïveté. Courage becomes foolhardiness, and dedication has no reward."_

"_If you can't accept any of that, you are not fit to be a Puella Magi."_

* * *

**To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari**

The Fourth Spell – Akemi Homura I

* * *

Absolute stillness…

Complete silence…

Utter darkness…

Akemi Homura regained consciousness and _attempted_ to wake up – "attempted" being the operative word, as even the simple matter of opening her eyes encountered an unexpected and seemingly insurmountable resistance. As she further came back into her senses, she noticed an enduring sensation of heaviness pressing down upon her body. She could move her body only with the greatest of effort and at that could only twist and turn at the waist, shifting her position in a fruitless struggle against some imperceptible force. As well, moving her hands proved equally impossible, as they were locked into an outstretched position extended from her sides. In spite of her struggles, however, she could feel no pain – only a persistent sensation of deathly cold, a numbness that threatened to take her senses away from her again. Even as her mind told her that, logically, every pain receptor in her body should be screaming at this moment, she could sense only that numbing chill. Even she, who had experienced the depths of powerlessness and helplessness, had never felt as vulnerable as she currently did.

_Where am I?_

_What is this?_

_What's happening to me?_

_Is this a dream?_

_WHERE AM I?_

Despite her best efforts, Homura could do nothing but grope and flail blindly. To her surprise and horror, she eventually found that even the small movements she had previously been able to make with her upper legs and torso were steadily being suppressed by whatever force was holding her place. Now she was completely stuck in place, subject to a virtually complete sensory deprivation; and she grew ever the more anxious as seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, and hours to progressively more indeterminable and interminable lengths of time in this silent Hell.

_Just where in the world… am I?_

_Am… am I… dead?_

_That can't… be… right…_

_I must… at least… open… my…_

The sensation of coldness had, at some point in time, faded entirely and gave way to a total numbness. Even so, Homura struggled to retain consciousness, with her will being powered by the sheer fear that if she gave in, everything would all be over. She had fought for so long and hard, defied destiny itself…

…and she would not be broken… not like this…

"_Is it really OK? You're… not afraid?"_

"_That's right! Why don't you try becoming a magical girl as well?"_

"_Will the battle ever end? No one knows."_

"_Homura-chan, I'm really happy that we became friends."_

"_Don't go! KANAME-SAN!"_

Devoid of any other external stimulus, Homura began to hear, if not feel, a steady, rhythmic thumping sound. Whether or not it was her own heartbeat, she could no longer tell. In perfect harmony with the increasingly loud beating, memories – of times long past, of paths taken and avoided, of battles fought and won, of friends long parted with – began to surface.

"_Either way, I'm against teaming up with her."_

"_This is terrible. It's too much!"_

"_DON'T LISTEN TO HIM!"_

Faint at first, these recollections of distant pasts showed themselves more vividly as time passed on, as if her life was truly replaying itself before her very eyes. She witnessed herself, fighting for her life and that of so many others, fighting against despair and destruction embodied…

"_Petrified and unable to accept their own fate… poor magical girls…"_

"_You, who continue to escape to different paths, cannot fight me…"_

"_If we'll turn into witches, then it's better to die here…"_

"_Better to die here…"_

"_Die… here…"_

"_Die…"_

"_Hey… how about we become monsters together…"_

"_Destroy, destroy, destroy until there's nothing left…"_

"_Destroy, destroy, destroy until there's nothing left…"_

"_Destroy, destroy, destroy…"_

"_Destroy…"_

"_This is not my battlefield…"_

The cycle of instantaneous flashbacks finally slowed down to focus on one particular memory…

* * *

_Although the mid-afternoon sky was covered with an otherworldly sheen of pink and violet, the leaden atmosphere reeked of depression, death, and madness. The rain continued to steadily pour down from this strange sky in a steady, unceasing trickle. The cityscape was littered with uprooted power lines and buildings and saturated with the stench of blood. And in the middle of it all lay she and her friend, immobile, battle-weary, and broken, with their arms locked together and their Soul Gems resting in their outstretched palms. The battle against the strongest of witches had been won, and the city had been saved; but who would save the saviors?_

_Kaname Madoka turned her head weakly and gazed at Akemi Homura. "I guess… it's the end for us too…"_

_Homura could only nod weakly. "Do you have any Grief Seeds?" When Madoka shook her head to answer in the negative, Homura sighed. "I see…" With that answer, she knew that her fate and that of her friend were sealed. One of two grisly ends awaited them – either untimely death or terminal corruption. Knowing this, Homura began to curse her fate, with her direst curses directed futilely at the little monster that set her and the other girls upon this path. "Hey…" she began. "How about we become monsters together and lay waste to this whole world? We'll wipe out everything… all traces of evil and sadness… destroy, destroy, destroy until there's nothing left…" Her face clouded with tears. "Don't you think… that would sound nice?"_

_Homura awaited Madoka's response. She instead heard a tiny clinking sound, and then felt one more surge of energy coursing through her. Quickly rolling over, she saw Madoka, smiling, holding a Grief Seed to Homura's Soul Gem._

"_I lied earlier," Madoka said. "I had one left."_

"_That can't be…" Homura gasped. "Why use it on me?" The two girls were in dire need of energy, and at the rapid rate of corruption their gems were undergoing, a single Grief Seed could save only one of them. Madoka, realizing that, had made the ultimate sacrifice for her friend._

"_Because I need you to do something that I can't," Madoka answered. "You can travel back in time, can't you, Homura-chan?" Madoka's voice nearly choked itself with its own sadness. "You can change history so that it doesn't end like this, can't you?" Homura answered a meek affirmative. "Could you save me from my stupidity… before I get deceived by Kyuubey?"_

"_I promise!" Homura pledged to her dying friend. "__**I will definitely save you!**__ No matter how many times I have to try, I swear I will protect you!"_

_Madoka's next words were poignant with expectation and hope. "I'm glad…"_

_Before she could say anything else, however, a new, mortal wave of pain whipped the poor girl's body into a series of convulsions. Homura had seen this before. Terminal corruption had begun; Kaname Madoka was transforming into a witch._

_Even before this, however, Madoka regained control of herself for one last request. "Could I ask you… for just one more thing?" Homura quickly nodded, prompting Madoka to finish her request. "I don't… want to become a witch. There are so many awful, sad things in this world, but there are also many things… worth protecting…"_

"_Madoka!"_

_At the mention of her name, Madoka regained her smile and, with the last of her energy and consciousness, held up her Soul Gem in front of Homura. "You finally called me by my first name… I'm happy…"_

_Given the chance to fill the world with the "happiness" called utter destruction, Kaname Madoka had responded by emphatically rejecting it to the bitter end. She had refused to curse the world or her fate, and she had instead entrusted that will to her friend. Kaname Madoka did not wish to become a witch._

_Sobbing freely, Akemi Homura pulled a small handgun out of her arsenal, took quivering aim at the darkening jewel before her, and…_

* * *

A blinding burst of scarlet light instantly pierced its way through Homura's sight, as if to spare her from reliving the nadir of that particular memory.

Homura shielded her eyes with her hands on reflex, only to, a mere second later, feel surprise at the fact that she could even move her hands, albeit slowly and with resistance not unlike that of moving her hands through water. Slowly and steadily, as waking consciousness continued to reassert itself in force, her mind further registered the impression of submersion in liquid as present across her entire body. Whatever she was currently covered in, however, was probably not water, as she discovered upon reflexive inhalation and exhalation. Instead of rushing in to fill her lungs, as water would have naturally done, the fluid remained in place.

Upon finally opening her eyes, Akemi Homura found herself submerged in a clear, transparent substance that was _definitely _not water, as evidenced by the numerous tiny immobile bubbles suspended in this solution. Unclothed, she was contained inside an upright cylindrical suspension device whose control space measured slightly over seven feet from top to bottom. In front of her, separating the interior of the containment area from the outside was an immaculately transparent window of what she was not entirely confident was merely glass. Aside from the free-floating bubbles, some of which had begun to flow upward and circulate through the tank as if of their own accord, visibility beyond this pane was perfect.

The room in which Homura's holding tank was situated gave off a discomfiting sense of starkness and austerity, not the least of which because of the sparse ceiling light provided by only four dimly-lit compact fluorescent bulbs placed, each one placed artlessly by itself in a corner. Arrays of black wiring snaked through the walls, ceiling, and floor; and evenly spaced in connection between these wires sat rows of workstation desks with laptop computers whose monitors constantly filled and refreshed screens full of green numbers, alphabet letters, and Chinese and Japanese symbols against black screens. Next to each of these machines lay a tiny black box marked only with a yellow panel with a black "Hazardous Materials" warning label etched onto it. The sole point of exit was an unmarked door the height of the room itself with an ominously heavy-looking wheel-locking mechanism.

_What in the world is this?_

Twisting to her sides, Homura could see holding tanks – drab brown cylindrical structures filled with the mysterious fluids – that she could only assume were identical to her own. To the left of her, the cylinder housed a lavender-haired, fair-skinned girl whom Homura guessed to be no older than thirteen at the most due to her small size and lack of development. Nude, as expressionless and immobile as the dead, she floated serenely in her tank, providing no resistance whatsoever and making Homura wonder if the girl was a corpse or a puppet that was never alive to begin with.

The holding tank to her right contained a small human skeleton, fully intact and stripped completely of all flesh.

_!_

Shaken by this, Homura began trying to break the walls by slamming into them, first with her fists, and then with her entire body; but any force she could muster dissipated harmlessly into the liquid solution before even striking the containment wall. Forcing herself not to give in to the steadily mounting sense of panic, she activated her powers… only to be stymied yet again when the telltale signs of magic failed to materialize. She lifted up her left arm to her face and checked the back of her arm. Her skin was unharmed and free of blemishes, but she quickly realized what was missing.

_Gone… My Soul Gem is gone!_

Now fully awake, Homura's mind was ablaze with questions and worries. Why could she not activate her powers? Had she somehow returned to becoming a normal human girl, with her soul residing safely inside her own form and not inside a jewel? Had she been de-powered and captured, placed into this tank by the Incubators? What was Kyuubey's role in all of this? Had she fallen in battle? Where were the other Puella Magi? Was everything she had gone through up to this point, going back in time again and again to change the fate of a dear friend, only to be saved by that friend in the end, just the fever-dream of a sick and lonely little girl in a hospital?

_Someone let me out of here!_

After hours of swimming fruitlessly against her captivity, Akemi Homura had worked herself into exhaustion for the fourth – or was it the sixth? – time that day. Was it even a day? Was it a week? At intervals, the clear jelly would harden and entomb her in her little cage, and a wave of weariness would wash over her and send her into a dreaming sleep. Her dreams would consist of a series of instantaneous flashes through her long and storied history, all of them vivid, none of them pleasant. All the while, the computers in the room would fill, flush, and refill with data.

The only changes to each waking cycle would be the girls in the two tanks immediately next to hers. To her left this time was a young lady whose dark skin, taller-than-average height, chestnut-colored hair, and large breasts would heavily imply a non-Asian, the first one of her kind Homura had seen in the tanks. To her right lay imprisoned a much younger girl with a full head of green hair and a much smaller frame that indicated that she could not be more than eleven at the oldest. Like the rest of the captives, and like Homura herself, they were completely naked. The taller girl floated as still as the dead, yet the younger one was beating her hands against the glass pane much as Homura had done earlier... with the same lack of success. She was moving her mouth frantically, clearly trying to say something to someone, anyone who could hear her, but there was no one other than her fellow captives, who were powerless to do anything even if her voice could reach them.

The first indication Homura received that this cycle would be different was the change of color on the ceiling lights from scarlet red to a much more pleasant light blue.

The wheel-lock mechanism turned slowly in a clockwise direction, and after three full revolutions of the lock, the deceptively ancient-looking door parted horizontal-wise into two halves, which quickly receded into the door frame. Six humanoid figures shuffled their way through the open door into the room in single file. All six of these wore spotless white overcoats that brought to mind standard laboratory wear, but these coats boasted much more material on them and covered all of their bodies but their heads completely. The most striking parts of these lab-coated figures, however, were the head coverings themselves. All of the half-dozen laboratory workers' heads were completely covered from crown to neck by balaclava hoods of dark grey, and the fronts of the faces were protected by industrial-issue goggles that looked to be opaque from Homura's point of view. Their differing heights were thus the only visual clues usable to differentiate any given one of them from another. Each of these masked scientists sat down and manned a laptop in the room, which left only the centermost computer free to steadily continue its own work.

The green-haired girl at Homura's right, perhaps optimistically encouraged by the presence of humans on the other end of the tank, began pounding against her confines with all the more ferocity. As Homura might have expected, the scientists did not even turn around to regard any of the captives, as engrossed as they seemed to be in the unceasing scroll of data before them.

She was surprised, then, to see the lab-coat at the terminal farthest to the right suddenly vacate his or her post and turn around to face the little girl in the tank.

The green-haired girl, still clinging on to some form of hope, or perhaps possessed of some despairing madness, swam against her confinement; and the scientist on the other end simply watched. Homura was unable to gauge the scientist's reaction; no facial expression or discernible body language showed through the completely covered scientist's form. The scientist merely stood there, watching, seemingly as deaf to the girl's please as Homura herself was forced to be. After a single minute of this, the scientist finally moved… back to the workstation, leaving the girl to resume trying to plead and fight her way out to her heart's content.

Or so it seemed at the time…

The scientist opened the "Hazardous Materials" box from the top, and from it, a dark green glow of light pulsed. With a gloved hand, the scientist gingerly produced from the box a gem, one that consisted of a jade jewel surrounded by an inward-curving "cage" of gold. Homura knew instantly – perhaps _instinctively_ would be the better word – just what this jewel was and what it contained.

_A Soul Gem…!_

The name said it all. The fist-sized jewel contained the very living essence, the "soul" in as literal a sense as possible, of a Puella Magi, of a girl who had obtained the power of magic in exchange for her very destiny. Homura had seen the story play out countless times over. In exchange for the granting of a wish thought to be impossible, a girl was transformed into a being optimized for fighting monsters, and her life energies were externalized and compacted into a protectable little jewel. In order to sustain the Puella Magi's existence, she needed to kill many monsters over and over again; and as they did so, the weight of her karma bore down on her ever the more intensely. Eventually, this vicious cycle would reach its breaking point, and the Puella Magi would eventually pay the price of her wish with her life. As cruel as this was, Homura, alone among all Puella Magi, knew that to only have to die was a supreme mercy, one granted to all of them by the selfless sacrifice of the girl who would become the greatest of them.

The Puella Magi of this era needed no longer fear becoming the monsters they fought…

If that was indeed the case, then why was the green jewel before her darkening at such a rapid rate? Why was the green-haired girl's body convulsing and contorting itself into a pained frenzy, the likes of which dredged up memories long buried within Homura's storied history?

_It can't be…_

_No… no, it can't be…_

She quickly wrenched her eyes away from the girl whose suffering she was unable to alleviate and turned them toward those who were most likely the ones behind that suffering.

Just above the computer at the center of the room, the Soul Gem floated in the air, held aloft by a tangle of red and blue cords that looked and writhed disturbingly more like the blood vessels of a functioning human circulatory system than any mere energy conductors.

_Stop…_

_Please… stop this…_

All six of the scientists continued plugging away dutifully at their terminals, as if displaying a most unscientific incuriosity at the fact that the very air around them was quivering like a mirage.

_Someone…_

"_**SOMEBODY, HELP ME!"**_ a voice, young, girlish, unfamiliar, and terrified, blasted into Homura's consciousness.

And then there was silence.

A pitch-black miasma exploded from the ceiling and instantly covered the room – and Homura's sight – in utter darkness.

Out from the blackness emerged a world different in its entirety from the laboratory. While the containment capsules she and the other girls were trapped in were (unfortunately) fully intact, the surroundings around her had completely changed. Instead of inside a laboratory, the capsules were sitting, like ornaments, at the edge of a sidewalk. Surrounding these capsules was a Dadaist artist's impression of a highway: The road signs, although somewhat familiar in shape, were inscribed with runes whose meaning was opaque to Homura; the arrows on the road pointed in any and all directions as they pleased, with no regard to such banal concepts as consistency or logic; and the roadway itself was littered with piles of the burning wreckages of devices that looked like spike-studded steel coffins with wheels and automobile engines crudely attached to them. Still more of these cars traversed these unreal highways and created more destruction and madness as they slammed and crashed into each other frequently and violently. "Pedestrians" with bulbous brown heads, bulging green eyes, and disproportionately tiny bodies would periodically walk out into this chaotic situation and inevitably, to a "man", be run over and flattened by this chaotic traffic. Above the blood-red skyline overlooking this Hellish highway, humanoid figures, identical to the highway victims except for the comically oversized construction hard hats covering their heads and faces, alternated in shifts between gathering materials and compiling those materials into a thin, arched roadway held in suspension above the ground.

Homura checked the immediate surroundings, as far as her limited and isolated point of view, for any other signs of life.

The green-haired girl, so full of life and desperate energy just a few seconds ago, had gone silent inside her tank... exactly as Homura had begun to fear. Her eyes, though still open and wet with tears, had gone dark and hollow, as if they were a window to an endless abyss. She no longer floated upright in the tank, but instead bobbed along with the flow of the clear substance she was trapped inside.

She was dead.

As one who had to stare into such eyes as those a literally incalculable number of times, Homura did not have to guess or suspect anything else. To be more precise, the girl's body was dead. The soul still existed, and if the Soul Gem that had transformed was indeed hers, as was very much likely the case, then the world was a manifestation of all of the negativity that soul had accumulated, laid bare for all who had eyes to witness.

She had transformed into a witch.

And those scientists with their strange computers and machines had likely somehow induced those transformations. How? To what end? For what reason? Who was all of this supposed to benefit? Were those scientists even human? And where was Madoka? The questions running through her mind afresh renewed her conviction to eventually find a way out of captivity, gather more information on where this place was and who was running it, and if it came down to it, crush the operation so that no more girls would have to suffer.

At around the same time she hardened her resolve, she saw one of the larger coffin-cars suddenly sprout from its broad sides a pair of grey, rail-thin, membranous structures that resembled the fossilized wings of some long-dead specimen. Thus newly-equipped, the vehicle leaped into the sky and shot like a bullet toward what passed for the horizon...

...whereupon it was summarily intercepted and bombarded by a series of pinpoint blasts of lightning-blue beams of power.

The beams perforated and explosively destroyed the vehicle on impact; but this did not prevent the driver and passengers from leaping out of the wreckage and escaping the destruction. The little grey men sprouted wings of their own – the exact same shape as the car's, but much smaller and scaled down for their tiny bodies – and continued their mad dash into the distance. Other previously ground-bound vehicles had begun to follow suit one-by-one and take to the skies, dispersing their passengers into the air as they did so. As the overpass neared construction, more of the builders who were working on it joined their fellows.

It soon became apparent just what was causing these mass direction shifts.

From further into the sky, at the razor's edge of Homura's viewing distance, she could see twelve bluish-grey dots floating in the sky. She could not see any further details, but what she _could_ see easily enough were the beams of energy emanating from these at steady intervals. The little creatures were clearly no match for those energy attacks, and the ones using their vehicles as cover fared only slightly better; yet they threw themselves with reckless abandon against their mysterious assailants. The skyline itself seemed to burst into flame.

First one, then a second, and then two more of the laser-spitters had fallen from the sky and landed onto the ground, each of them landing with an earth-cracking tremor that Homura had seen but not felt. Grounding them allowed a closer look at these things, and Homura did not fail to seize the opportunity to do so. What she saw were four deep blue human-shape metallic devices that heavily resembled suits of interlocked chainmail and plate armor. The heads of these nine-foot-tall curiosities were enclosed by glossy, opaque drum structures, and the rest of their bodies were reinforced and folded in such a way as to remind one of the specialized suits worn by astronauts on journeys into space. On these particular units, ugly white cobweb-shaped cracks appeared on the otherwise smoothly polished surfaces of the heads, and sparks of electricity periodically erupted from their heads, arms, and feet. Next to these damaged armor suits lay guns that, being too large to fit with human hands, were evidently designed to be wielded by the armors. The guns looked like tank main guns modified for anti-personnel use by paring down the length of the barrels and compensating for the ensuing theoretical loss of killing power by adding to the barrels' width.

Upon closer inspection, the one that landed nearest Homura had been torn open in the chest area, revealing what was once a human's hand prior to being blooded, mangled, and stripped of all fingers except for its ring. In addition to this, a mixture of a brown substance she suspected to be oil and a red substance she was more certain was blood mingled and pooled together on the ground around both of the armor suits. If any of her senses besides sight could penetrate the fluid of her confinement, Homura figured she would have been treated to a foul acrid, ferrous odor.

Above the cloudless sky, the battle between the flying familiars and the futuristic knights still raged on. The overpass road, which by now had been built to encompass the whole of the roadway as far as Homura could see, had apparently been made to spec, as all of the familiars allocated to building it had joined their compatriots to fight against the foreign element.

Just as Homura wondered why that particular road received so much attention, she received her attention in the form of a lone vehicle speeding its way through the overpass and shooting straight toward the battlefield. Clearly at least twice as large and as long as the previous vehicle, this twelve-wheeled monstrosity resembled a commercial freight truck; on the broad sides of the freight compartment were inscribed a graffiti-like jumble of black runes, and on the front was painted the face of an angry, scowling elderly man with a long red antenna where its nose was supposed to be. Upon seeing this face, Homura was reminded of the old demon in Japanese folklore that guarded Hell in the form of a burning ox cart with an old man's face on the wheel.

As soon as this truck entered the firing range of the invaders, they did not fail to blow the thing to pieces with their weaponry. Just as with its smaller counterparts, however, this freight carrier managed to unload its contents into the sky mere instances before it was annihilated.

Out of the first hole blasted into the freight compartment shot a crackling, sizzling nexus of dark green energy, a not-quite-black hole in the sky. Indeed, much like the aforementioned astronomical phenomenon, this energy drew matter into itself. Instead of sucking in anything and everything within its power like a true black hole, however, it targeted such specific items as the wreckages of the lesser vehicles felled by the invaders... and eventually the corpses and weapons of the four suits of armor the vanguard had managed to vanquish in the initial assault.

_So the witch has finally shown itself..._

As the pieces flew together toward the center of this energy, they did not simply funnel into the epicenter. Instead, they gathered in extremities around the center and orbited around it, clumping and interlocking together and forming clear extrusions around the sizzling "core". The end result of this fusion begat a crude, unsteady, and almost mocking approximation of the super armor suits, with wheels as its shoulders, elbows, and knees, and the guns as fingers for its hands. Around the gangly metal limbs and the fender grill that passed for a head, the core of the monster, still exposed, pulsated like a beating heart. This newly constructed monster Homura estimated to be around twenty feet in height, as its sheer height and mass absolutely dwarfed its opponents.

It did not take long after the end of this formation for the clash to resume in earnest.

The remaining eight suits of armor flitted and darted in a synchronized orbit around and far away from the monster, changing directions as necessary to avoid the limbs that flailed and trashed in an attempt to swat them out of the sky. While dodging the monster's attacks, they would speed back into optimum damage range and shoot. Even Homura, in spite of herself, felt some twinge of admiration for the workmanship of the suits of armor and the skill of the pilots. With that having been said, all of the skill and firepower that the flying suits could muster could ill account for the fact that the core continued to regenerate all damage done to its extremities and, when targeted itself, would simply draw all attacks harmlessly into it.

It seemed to grind down into a stalemate...

...until the monster suddenly cupped its two hands together and extruded from them a massive, sky-darkening blast of energy. When visibility of the area was restored, another seven attacking suits were simply gone with no traces of their existence whatsoever, leaving only a single survivor.

There were no tears to be shed for the fallen. Homura still did not know the details, but she had gathered enough information to strongly suspect that the pilots of those armored suits were either those same scientists who had watched over her captivity or closely related to them, and that those same scientists through means unknown had somehow induced the girl's transformation into a witch. If the scientists did not know what they were doing, they were incurably hubristic and foolish; if they did, they were irredeemably evil. In either case, they were beyond saving. The witch had simply saved her the trouble of doing what she was likely going to have to do herself when she had the opportunity to escape.

All throughout this, the most important question still remained.

_Madoka, where are you?_

The Kaname Madoka she knew would not have allowed that girl to suffer as she did. The Kaname Madoka she knew would not have allowed the witch to be born. The Kaname Madoka she knew would have taken onto herself the burden of the girl's pain and anger, in whatever form it may have taken, and quietly bestowed to her one last vision of hope before her life's candle was extinguished.

If nothing else, she liked to believe, Kaname Madoka would not have stood by as researchers steeped in folly undid her great work.

Out of the initial group of twelve flying suits of armor, only one remained to continue the fight. Shaken by the instantaneous elimination of its comrades, it broke formation and flew more defensively than it had while in a group. Its rate of fire had decreased drastically and sporadically from its previous high of five seconds per energy burst, and as the battle wore on, it had progressively given up even the pretense of trying to engage the monster on a proactive stance. Perhaps emboldened by the destruction of three enemies in one shot and the tactical cowardice of the remaining one, the monster gave chase, smashing with its ever-growing limbs and pausing every so often to shoot the annihilating energy blast straight forward at that lone metal insect trying to fly away and save its pitiful existence.

The battle would soon be decided. Madoka willing, the next group of lab coats would dwell upon their predecessors' fatal insanity, terminate whatever experiments they were running on her and the other Puella Magi, and free them. Even this rather generously assumed that Homura would not find a chink in the armor and liberate herself and the others. She had no intention, after all, of gamely waiting to be killed while unable to fight back, whether to the scientists or to the monster that had sent them to their graves.

She did not get far with these thoughts of escape when a twinge of an emotion not unlike, yet distinct from, fear briefly overwhelmed her.

_Not again. At a time like this..._

She braced herself for another cycle of blackout and sensory deprivation, followed by whatever process was used to bring her worst memories to the surface, but the expected never came to pass. Instead, she shuddered as a _presence_, entirely distinct from that of the witch, a cloying oppression that threatened to deny her existence, filled her mind with an uncertainty and terror that could be felt even through the containment fluid. The air itself quivered and warped like ripples in a disturbed pool of water, as if gripped with the same maddening fear that had threatened to overtake Homura. Even the monster in the distance must have sensed this disturbance in the atmosphere, for it stopped its up until that point relentless pursuit of the lone suit of armor, reared back, and shot forward at a hurried speed it had not displayed in its previous battles. The suit of armor, instead of giving chase, merely held its position in the sky.

As the monster sped toward Homura's prison, the air in front of her continued warping and distorting, and before long, cracks and tears in the air began to manifest. Tiny at first, these cracks lengthened and widened with a mounting intensity, and the feeling of utter dread Homura felt grew proportionally with each new distortion. For Homura, who had as a traveler through time been able to predict her surroundings by virtue of her experiences in living through them, the uncertainty of being unable to predict what would happen next added greatly to her unease. Ever since waking up into captivity, she had been unable to discern what would happen next, and her perfect prison prevented her from reacting to these changes on her own terms. For the first time in so many long years, she found herself... afraid of what the future may bring... and more specifically, afraid of what evil creature would crush its way through the witch's barrier at any moment, and of what portents such a monster would herald.

The space in front of Homura's view shattered like so much fine glass, causing her to skip a heartbeat.

The first thing to emerge through the opening in the atmosphere caused by the shattered was an arm, completely wrapped in white, tight, form-fitting bandaging with tiny flecks of gold sewn intermittently. The arm and the outstretched palm attached to it were, at odds with Homura's initial expectations, slender and short, youthful in appearance. Another arm slowly shoved its way inside, right through the widening cracks; this second one was, unlike the first, covered in the same sterile cloth as that of the laboratory workers, yet it was still noticeably shorter than all of the other workers she had seen up to this point.

Another momentous series of fracturing and shattering later, the figure emerged fully into the witch's labyrinth. At first glance, this one looked no different from the others aside the odd lack of height relative to the others - less than five and a half feet tall, from the looks of it - and from the tight, white-and-gold cloth wrapped securely around the right hand; but the other difference was in the mask. While the others had incorporated all-protecting and all-concealing headwear into their uniforms, the headwear of the others was utilitarian and not at all striking after initial impressions. Such was not the case with this new one, whose mask was a black-and-grey sunburst-shaped icon divided perfectly into vertical halves. One half was a deep shade of grey that reminded one of a heavily overcast day; the other half, covering the left eye, was an abyss-black surface marked only with a drawing of an eye and a mouth locked in an expression of mortal terror.

Upon seeing this mask, Homura tried to gasp, but the containment fluid regulated the air that she could inhale.

_She had seen that symbol before._

_That sunburst was the face of a monster she had seen devour an entire universe._

_That monster was the dark side of a goddess._

_That goddess was Kaname Madoka._

_But if that was Madoka... then who - what - was this person in front of her eyes?_

Upon emerging fully in this world, the young woman (?) in the witch mask turned toward Homura's direction. The two stared at each other, face-to-face, for all of one second, before the witch-mask quickly turned to the right and headed in that direction... as if willfully ignorant of the massive creature of steel and evil that had gunned down all but one of the witch-mask's comrades and was even at that very moment gearing up for an assault on this impertinent being who dared force their way into its sanctum. Seemingly heedless of the monster, the witch-mask lightly tapped the containment cylinder of the green-haired shell that was once a girl. With an emission of smoke, the glass of the cylinder quickly receded into the top of the chamber, which left the corpse and the fluid surrounding it to spill out in a mess onto the floor.

In a series of blindly precise motions, the witch-mask picked up the dead body with her left... and countered a thrashing strike of the monster's right "arm" by grabbing the tip with her own right hand. Despite the massive size difference in limbs, it was the monster who visibly struggled to force more power in its attacking arm to turn its losing position in the struggle of strength around. For all the good it did against the new opponent, however, the monster might as well have been a toddler trying to arm-wrestle an Olympic champion. While holding the struggling monster in place with one arm, the witch-mask held the body of the girl aloft in the left arm, thrusting the dead body's face toward the enemy as if offering the body back to the corrupted soul. Instead of deciding to accept the offer or even giving any special regard to the body its soul once resided in, however, the monster decided to use its other arm. The charge of energy in the hands' tips meant that, instead of simply trying to add more leverage to the clinch, the monster simply intended to blow the target away with its stolen railguns at point-blank range.

Likely sensing this tactic at the same time as Homura, the witch-mask…

…tossed aside the body.

There was no defensive stance. There was no shifting of the legs to loosen up for evasion. Other than throwing away the body, the witch-mask made no other movements and certainly no preparations other than to apparently allow itself to be blown away by this final attack. Even far more mobile enemies who utilized the freedom of the skies and kept their distance from the blast were shot down; the witch-mask, by contrast, was ground-bound and at point-blank range – prime distance to be washed away in an inescapable wave of darkness. Once the guns' charges had reached their telltale critical threshold, Homura had to consciously tell herself to not shut her eyes.

In doing so, she was rewarded with a glimpse of the witch-mask's form in that fateful second before it would be bathed in the evil energy's fell light. In a natural, fluid cascade of motions that Homura almost missed, the witch-mask lifted up its right hand and pointed it, with palms turned outward, toward the direction of the blast.

As anticipated, the enemy primed its guns and unleashed the storm.

A torrent of lightning and fire consumed Homura's vision.

When it reached the witch-mask's hand, however, the energy deformed into an incomprehensible mass of visual noise and imploded upon itself, shattering into hundreds of tiny shards. Into the midst of it all, bathing in the baleful radiance of the onslaught of darkness, unharmed and unfazed by what was up until then an absolute offense, the witch-mask purposefully advanced forward, footstep by footstep, distorting and crushing more of the attack with her right hand as it did so. The shuffling became walking; the walking sped into striding; the striding segued into a full blown run.

The familiars of the monster sensed this strange turn in the tide of battle. Foregoing the increasingly obsolete tactic of simply reinforcing the witch with their bulk, the familiars and the vehicles they rode, not bothering to wait for the shards of the failing energy attack to clear, simply dropped from the sky and piled on top of and in front of the intruder, effectively entombing the foe and sealing any methods of advance or retreat.

That's what should have happened. Again in spite of all logic and experience to the contrary, that was exactly what Homura found herself wanting to have happened.

The scene that played out, in defiance of these hopes, began with the witch-mask continuing its advance, and using the pile of familiars as stepping stones on its path forward and upward. Each vehicle adding to the surreal pileup had unintentionally become a platform that led ever closer to the epicenter of the beast. In an attempt to stop this in its tracks, the monster thrashed at the base of the pileup with one arm and, with the other, chopped downward so as to smash the runner and its supports in one blow... even if it meant having to destroy its own familiars and their modes of transport into the ground to do it. Once again, its own movements and intentions were thwarted, as the witch-mask gripped the tip of the monster's limb and, using the barrel of the railgun at the tip, agilely vaulted itself onto the broad side of the monster's arm. From there, the witch-mask ran down the length of the arm, deftly dodging all of the beast's attempts to shake it off. Upon reaching where the shoulder would be if the monster's limbs were better defined, the witch-mask spread its arms wide...

...and dove directly into the core of energy at the center.

For a single second, the world lost its color. Even through the soundproof containment chamber, Homura heard a strange sound akin to an air-filled balloon popping and a mirror violently shattering at precisely the same instance. The entire witch's labyrinth and everything in and of it warped, area by area, into sections with the consistency of disfigured puzzle pieces; and each section, as it warped, fell off the sky like broken glass off a window pane. Behind each of the fallen pieces was the laboratory setting with which Homura had ample time to familiarize herself. The familiars and vehicles comprising the monster's body broke off on an individual basis and fell to the ground, breaking into pieces upon impact.

Before long, the sky had literally fallen down around the core of energy whose will had previously held the world together. Said core dilated and enlarged erratically, pulsing like a hyperactive heart, as if to tell the dying world around it that it refused to perish along with it. The witch was not given this choice, however, for the right hand of the victor was upon it. It too, shattered into so many tiny fragments.

* * *

In time, the bizarre world of the witch's labyrinth gave way to the laboratory setting which Homura had come to loathe.

The most noticeable change in the room's scenario was that of the gem being held in place by the disturbingly artery-like cabling suspended from the ceiling. No longer a sublime jade color, it had completely blackened, and a corona of corrupted black energy flowed around the jewel's hollow core. A curse danced on Homura's lips, but thanks to the containment fluid, no sound was able to escape from her mouth.

A Grief Seed.

The Grief Seed, as its name implied, was the embryonic, dormant form of the monster that had just been defeated. After the Puella Magi accomplished the daunting task of defeating the witch and thus reducing it to the gem that spawned it, she would then use the energies remaining inside the jewel to purify her own Soul Gem, restoring her energies and cleansing the corruption that inevitably resulted from using her magic. The corrupted energy would then be fed to the animal-like companion for energy absorption and further purification. The reliance of Soul Gems upon this method of purification meant that, whether they liked it or not, Puella Magi would have to defeat witches on a continual basis in order to perpetuate their own existences.

Such was how the creators of the system intended it. However, here, in this laboratory, she saw none of the alien animaloid creatures normally responsible for ensuring the gem's purification. What she did see was an unpurified and still volatile Grief Seed hanging from the ceiling, with seemingly no one or nothing tending to it. Her worry increased; left untended, the witch would revive and likely adapt against whatever flaws led to its initial defeat. In addition to rendering meaningless the effort and sacrifices needed to defeat it the first time, it would make the witch more dangerous. In addition, if the scientists were the ones who lost their lives in that barrier, then there would be no one present who could fight the witch, except for the one with the sunburst mask. In any case, there were few things Homura could imagine worse than being trapped again in a witch's barrier while unable to fight back.

Suddenly, however, the raw unpurified energy from the Soul Gem began to be sucked into the wiring itself, like dust into a vacuum cleaner. One second after, the green scroll of data against the black screens of the monitors turned an ominous red. The containment fluid, which had up until this point allowed Homura to float freely and consciously within, hardened and sealed her movements once more.

She knew by experience what would come next. The lights would go out, and all five of her senses would be sealed, including her waking consciousness. Her life would then literally flash before her eyes in a montage of increasingly ugly memories depicting the low points of her life. This was likely how the experimenters induced witch transformation in the other girl before her, and many others before her. Realizing this was empowering in its own right; she knew what to resist and had a good idea of how. It was simply a matter of fighting against her own mind and body.

The wheel lock turned. One rotation. A second rotation. A third rotation. The door parted, and as before, six figures in lab coats and concealing head- and hand-wear shuffled in and took their positions. Whether or not these were the same ones she could not tell, though it did call into question her earlier hypothesis that the first batch of researchers were among the ones lost in the witch's barrier. Among this half-dozen was the one in the sunburst mask, still noticeably shorter than the others, yet shown to be potentially as dangerous as any of the rest of them combined. Only three containment cylinders, hers and the two to her immediate sides, lay within Homura's immediate peripheral range of sight, yet she suspected there were many more. The one on the right remained empty for the time being; green-hair's body was irretrievably lost within her own barrier, due directly to the witch-mask's actions. The one on the left still contained the tall, dark-skinned foreigner, whose situation had not visibly changed in the slightest.

The other scientists, as usual, manned their terminals. The witch-mask, however, did not move to a computer, but instead chose to walk right in front of Homura's containment cylinder. Unable to move as she was, Homura could not help but stare at the witch-mask directly, face-to-face. No identifiable expressions or features escaped through the mask; on Homura's end, she kept her own face as expressionless as possible. She was not going to allow this lot the pleasure of even looking as if she were going to give in.

As if sensing this, the witch-mask then turned away from her and motioned in a two-fingered gesture with her left hand in the direction of the other scientists. In response, one of them reached into the hazardous materials box nearest its terminal and carefully lifted out of it an object whose violet gleam preceded it out of the box. If Homura had any doubts as to what this object was, they were completely eliminated when the witch-mask, upon being presented the glowing jewel by the other scientist, deliberately held it to Homura's eyesight.

_Another Soul Gem... No, that's…_

My _Soul Gem!_

_This bastard..._

And then everything went dark, leaving Homura once again to her own thoughts.


	5. The Fifth Spell – Homura II

"_You don't have to understand."_

"_My words don't have to resonate within you…"_

"_But still, I beg you. Let me protect you."_

* * *

**To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari**

The Fifth Spell – Akemi Homura II

* * *

_Homura saw red._

_Homura heard red._

_Homura felt red._

_Homura tasted red._

_Homura smelled red._

_Her entire world was the color red._

* * *

_In perfect synchronicity with the harsh red light filling the periphery of her vision, a shrill police alarm-like sound filled Homura's ears, which after the prolonged periods of sensory deprivation latched on to this strong stimulus all the more greedily. Where once her sense of touch had succumbed to numbing suddenly gave way to mind-blanking, sense-assaulting pain across her entire body. The smells of smoke and burning filled her nose._

_This dream had felt particularly real, much more so than the others..._

...And then she opened her eyes.

Jolted out of her dreaming slumber, Homura awoke to a reality that she could only wish was another artificial nightmare.

The upper half of her body was free from the cylinder, which had at some point tipped over and smashed upon the ground, spilling its contents – including Homura herself. Shards of the glass-like containment cylinder's walls had buried themselves into her skin, and the blood from the ensuing skin lacerations had stained the jelly-like fluid on the ground a deep red. The laboratory itself, likewise, was in chaos. Blazes of fire were spreading across the computers and telecommunications cabling and incinerating all of that precious equipment that they touched. With their bulbs broken, the light fixtures hung lazily off their suspensions and bled sparks of light and fire that added to the conflagration. The other tanks had also been destroyed, yet the dark-skinned girl did not respond in any way to her sudden freedom except by lying against the glass-, fluid-, and flame-filled floor.

Even in the literal heat of the moment, Homura quickly realized that if she did not want to die in this place, she had to get out as speedily as possible. She willed her exhausted and unwilling body to crawl completely out of her tank and get back on her own two feet. As soon as she attempted to do the latter, however, the ground shook as if from a directed blast, blowing her right back to the ground and knocking her onto her back. This was painful enough in and of itself, but the numerous tiny shards of glass (?) embedded into her bare back had been pushed further in, introducing her to a brave new world of pain. On reflex, she screamed out, but no one heard or answered.

Somewhat serendipitously for Homura, whatever had caused this blast had knocked her Soul Gem off the ceiling suspension and onto the floor. Homura seized this opportunity and immediately lunged for it, but balked once she saw the dull violet coloring, as using it to heal her wounds in its current state would run the risk of terminal corruption. She had to find a power source to replenish it, and quickly.

Ignoring the sweltering heat and pain tearing through her back and legs, she once again and this time successfully forced herself to stand on her shaky feet. Remembering where the scientists stored their jewels, she then tried to check the boxes next to the burning computer equipment. Said boxes turned out, for better or for worse, to be more flame-retardant than the rest of the equipment in the room, but even they were damaged to the point where Homura could – and did – smash the tops open to reveal their contents. The scientists must have been forced to abandon the equipment on extremely short notice, as there were four unopened boxes containing fresh Soul Gems. A fifth one was empty, and the last of them contained an unpurified Grief Seed, which she promptly used to strengthen her own jewel. As there were no Incubators in sight, she quickly resealed the Grief Seed back into its box. This was neither the most intelligent nor the most ethical of decisions, she knew, but survival came before anything else.

With new strength and radiance flowing through her Soul Gem, Homura healed herself back to full capacity. When her magic returned, as did her magical clothing and bow... as well as one shield-shaped device, situated on her left wrist, she had thought she would never see again.

Homura stared at the artifact on her left hand in sheer disbelief.

"Why is this thing here?" she asked aloud.

The only thing that answered her was another room-shaking blast. Following her ears, she looked up to see a ceiling that was caving in by the second. She was reasonably certain that someone or something was trying to pound its way into the room, but was much less sure about whether or not she wanted to be around when the laboratory was broken into or destroyed, whichever came first. With this in mind, she ran straight to the door and tried to open. As soon as she gripped the wheel lock, however, she flinched back on reflex, for the lock felt superheated to the touch. Not letting this stop her, she simply blew the door off its hinges with pointed, rapid-fire shards of her own concentrated magic.

Exiting the room led Homura down a narrow corridor of indeterminate length, one thick with the scents of blood and fire. The thickening smoke trails obscured her vision and prevented her from obtaining an accurate picture of her position relative to any potential exit points. The lack of vision also meant that Homura had stepped on, before being able to see, a masked corpse in a laboratory coat. The body's upper half, separated through the torso by some great blunt force entering through the front, lay slumped against the walls. The mask itself had been partially destroyed as well, and the unmasked portion of the face was that of a middle-aged, balding Japanese man with an ugly, blue discoloration on his forehead. It was somewhat of a relief to see that the scientists were human after all underneath the hoods, but this relief did not last long.

A three-pronged fork in the path down the corridor lay ahead. But before Homura could try to figure out which was the path to freedom, a spray of bullets fired from to the path to her right, forcing her to hug the walls for safety. She peered across the corner in order to see where these projectiles had originated from; but before she could see past the smoke, the path immediately behind her spat out a column of flames with a force that blew her off her feet and sent her on a short tumble forward.

Shaking this off, she scrambled to her feet... and found herself staring right into a gun barrel whose chamber size suggested enough firepower to blow her head off in a single shot. She quickly activated the shield-like device on her left arm and watched as the entire world around her became a greyscale that somehow accentuated its surrealism. In this grey world, time stood still. The flames stopped roaring, and the bullet shells held their position in mid-air.

_I never thought that I would see this thing again... or miss it,_ Homura thought.

Homura allowed herself a sigh of relief before getting back to business. She reached into her device in order to take inventory of what she had to work with. She had a wealth of firearms, munitions, and the like that she could gain access to within literally seconds along with her time-stopping ability, and she would likely need them now if she wanted to survive and make sense of where she was.

Thus safely out of danger for the "time" being, she was able to take a better look at her would-be murderer. It was a suit of armor that looked identical to the ones she saw fighting the witch, but was smaller and lighter. This one was built for ground theatres, as evidenced by the small wheel-like protrusions on its legs' undersides in lieu of the wings of the earlier, taller models. The barrels were longer and thinner than the aerial models, which made Homura wonder how the bullets that shot out were able to cause so much damage, besides the obvious answers of modified shells or simply knowing precisely where and what to shoot. Strangely, and also unlike the aerial models, the clear, undamaged window around the machine allowed Homura to confirm that these monsters did, indeed, have human pilots.

Wishing to conserve her magic until she had a better idea of what she was up against, she released the time lock, but not before putting distance between herself and the shooter. Reasoning that the person in the machine was more likely than not one of the laboratory's defenders, due to the scientists themselves having used these devices in the defense of the laboratory against the witch, she ran further down the path it was guarding. Just as she had come to that conclusion, however, she had witnessed two of the machines gliding and strafing across the hallway, shooting at each other. The only difference between the two belligerents was their coloring – one wore the deep blue she had seen inside the skyline of the witch's labyrinth, and the other was a sandy brown. As of currently, Brown clearly had the advantage and was pushing Blue further back. Not wishing to waste her valuable energies on interfering with this battle, Homura continued her run without even the slightest thought of decelerating, slid between the legs of the brown one, and left both of the combatants to do battle with each other as they pleased.

Continuing down this path led to a large room identical to the one she originally escaped from, right down to the extensive fire and impact damage spreading across the room's consoles. Of the six containment centers, the three on the side to Homura's right were empty, and of the empty ones, two of them were tipped over and destroyed in the same manner as hers. The three on the other side of the room had also been blown over, but this was not quite as surprising to her as what they evidently used to contain prior to their destruction.

Spread out like inanimate plush toys amidst the flames lay three exotic creatures, all of whom possessed markings on their coats unlikely to be found on any natural animal.

The first was completely black, save for the brightly-colored tattoo-like markings strewn in a seemingly haphazard fashion across its overturned egg-shaped body. Extending outward from each of the four sides of its body were a fleshy, ear-like structure with a pink tip split into four lobes and a glowing ring of gold orbiting the broad centermost point of the "ear". At the base of the "egg" was a bright red marking that was itself egg-shaped. Two red, shining orbs positioned so as to look like eyes were located on the side facing the ground. The second appeared much more animal-like in form; indeed, were it not for its red eyes, strangely-shaped and -colored jet black ears, and the rings on each ear, this one might well have passed for a dressed-up house pet or doll. The third, like the second, was catlike in appearance, with its primary differentiation from the second being the shorter white earlobes that matched the rest of its white pelt.

Homura knew instantly what those creatures were, and she was more familiar with the third of those creatures than she could ever have cared to be. In this situation, however, she vastly preferred the devil she knew to the ones she did not.

"KYUUBEY!" she screamed out almost involuntarily as she dashed toward the fallen creature.

From behind Homura abruptly sounded a shrill whistling noise, like the undoing of a knot or the cracking of a whip. She quickly aborted her dash and spun on her heels in an anticipation of the next surprise... only to catch the faintest glimpse of a glint of light among the flames. Less than a second afterwards, first the egg-shaped creature, then the black-eared feline one, and finally the one she called Kyuubey suddenly flew quickly yet listlessly toward the room entrance and beyond, as if their bodies were being pulled by some kind of string.

Not in the mood for surprises, Homura stopped time and intercepted the three Incubators in mid-air... only to find that they were, indeed, being pulled by an extremely thin piece of wire. After prying them loose, she retraced her steps down the corridor in order to follow the trails of wire to their points of origin (in the process stepping over the broken machines of the two combatants who had apparently fought each other to their mutual ends after Homura left them the first time).

Following the strings a distance of ten yards, Homura finally encountered their origin in the form of a butterfly-like mechanical device hovering above the ground. Though a great deal larger than normal a butterfly, it was nonetheless small and compact enough to comfortably navigate the cramped corridor even at full wingspan. The ridges and patterns marking the mecha-butterfly were covered by a dark, scaly structure that managed to emit something of a gleam even when utterly immobile due to stopped time. Two complex interleaving networks of wires and lenses emulated the butterfly's natural compound eye system. The wires used for capturing its prey emitted from tiny protrusions extending from the fore and hind legs. Unlike the human-shaped mechs, however, this butterfly one did not seem to have a cockpit, which suggested that this was piloted either from a remove or by an artificial intelligence system.

Whatever its purpose was, Homura did not want this thing pursuing her or the Incubators as they made their escape. So, after laying the Incubators on the ground, she reached into the butterfly's delicate network of compound eyes and ripped them out, as many of them at a time as her small arms could. She blasted off the antenna and tore off the hind legs. For good measure, she also strategically fitted shards of her own magic into the ridges of the butterfly-mech's "veins". And to be sure, she picked up her charges and ran down the length of the other path of the corridor before releasing the time lock.

Three seconds after time resumed its flow, Homura saw a flash of light and felt a fresh heat wave wash over her from behind, but she did not look back. For that brief moment, she was content; the butterfly could not cause her any more trouble while it was on its death throes.

She barely had time to release this tension before she heard another whistling sound heading her way from the distance ahead of her. She immediately dropped to the ground and, looking up, saw five burning trails of smoke and light whiz past her position. Having a very good idea of what those trails belonged to and what was going to happen to her immediate area if she did not get out of there, she continue running forward as fast as she could. Surely enough, another cascade of explosions blasted through the corridor behind her, and an ensuing wall of smoke and fire advanced toward her position, cutting off all hope of retreat unless she wanted to burn energy running through flames.

Only one path remained – forward.

* * *

Homura threaded her way through the flame-wreathed laboratory and continued to gather information on her surroundings as best she could. One fact that was readily apparent was that at some point, while she was asleep and likely being experimented on, the laboratory had become a battleground. The brown humanoid mechs had made much progress in destroying the laboratory and gunning down all personnel they could find; the blue mechs, by direct contrast, were the ones defending the laboratory, and badly at that. The brown ones, who were the aggressors in this fight, were clearly winning; the blues could match neither the brown mechs' numerical superiority nor their technical prowess. As far as Homura was concerned, she had no dog in this fight – the browns attacked her on sight, treating her no differently than any of their enemies, while she was convinced the blues were being controlled by the scientists experimenting on her and the other Puella Magi. She would have destroyed them and their experiments herself if she had the luxury to do so. But for now, she had to better conserve her precious magical powers until she had a better idea of what to do and who to fight.

She still had many questions to be answered, after all.

Who were these people anyway? How did she – or the other magical girls and the Incubators, for that matter – end up here? What were they doing with the Soul Gems? And where was this place anyway?

Eventually, hours' worth of dodging belligerent mechs and walls of technology set afire had paid off. Homura had found a hole in the structure above, very likely caused by and most certainly exploited by the invaders, which led her out of the corridor maze and into the upper levels. Dodging through all of those heat waves left Homura utterly unprepared for the onslaught of bone-chillingly cold air and snow breezing through the opening.

_Snow?_

In emerging from the ruined laboratory, Homura was greeted with an expanse of leaden overcast sky and a wind chill that threatened to worm its way into her very soul. Homura found it difficult to breathe, and not just from the cold. A sustained gale-force wind storm imparted its heaviness and gravity onto the air, making it difficult for Homura to catch her breath; and her fingers, clasped as they were around the Incubators, threatened to stiffen on the spot. Unrelenting snowfall and the ceaseless wailing of the winds, the likes of which she had never experienced before, conspired with rising plumes of smoke to drastically whittle down her range of sight and hearing to just a few feet ahead of her. Below her, the snow on the ground swallowed her ankles and threatened to mire her entire lower leg if she stayed still for too long. Difficult as it was, she had to stay strong and continue moving on.

As she was continuing her walk, she suddenly felt a crippling, sharp pain tear into her left foot. Instinctively, she bent down on her left knee in pain, which caused the strangely silent creatures she had been protecting to fall out of her arms. As she could feel the cold seeping into her body through a freshly-opened wound, she resolved to heal that with magic before it could even think about beginning to develop complications. With this having been done, she stopped to inspect the ground in order to see what stabbed her in the foot, as well as to recover the Incubators.

Removing the snow beneath her revealed a royal-blue-and-black-patterned panel shaped like a butterfly's wing. For confirmation, she lightly ran her fingers against the ridges of the veins… and frowned. As she thought, the ridges were razor-sharp. This thing had once been a wing belonging to one of those strange mechanical butterflies that she had encountered inside the laboratory. The right edge of the wing was bent out of shape and ruined so as to suggest that someone, or something, had sheared this wing straight off the host's body, most likely in as few goes as possible when the obvious lack of damage elsewhere was taken into consideration. On the bottom tip of the wing was a series of alphabet letters and numbers separated by a hyphen. Although the significance of this eluded Homura, she examined the alphanumerical string and committed it to memory. She did not like to admit it, but she was getting desperate for some kind of clue, any clue, as to her situation and those of the other Puella Magi she encountered.

"H… s… C… A… -0… 1…?"

After sounding it out, Homura tossed it aside in frustration. More likely than not, it was just the serial or model number of the butterfly mech, and she would need much more than that to shed some light on this mystery. She continued groping around for the Incubators she had dropped, all the while refusing the urge to curse them for choosing forms with white pelts.

"_What are you doing, Akemi Homura?"_

"That voice… Kyuubey? You're awake? Where are you?"

"_Behind you."_

She had to focus her eyes intently to see just a little more past the snowstorm to see the silhouette of the white-furred creature against the stormy backdrop of white snowfall. Unmindful of the near subzero temperature of its surroundings, the Incubator was busily eating away at the bodies of its brethren. It then dawned on Homura that the others were likely dead husks from the start, and that she had mistakenly conflated the heat of the flames of the laboratory interior with the creatures' natural body heat.

Whatever. She had bigger things to worry about.

"Kyuubey? Where are we? What is this? What's going on?"

"_What do you mean, Akemi Homura?"_ it asked back.

"How did we end up here? And where is 'here' anyway?"

"_Ah, the location. According to my estimates, we are near the peak of a volcano mountain region in the middle of Kunashir, the southernmost island of the Kuril Archipelago. If I remember correctly, the Kuril are disputed territory between Russia and Japan. That includes this one. Perhaps we are in the midst of renewed hostilities for ownership of the islands?"_

"Maybe so," replied Homura, "but in that case, that does not even begin to explain why all of those Puella Magi are here… or what _we_ are doing here, for that matter." Homura's first thought was that the girls were Puella Magi who contracted to fight in the dispute. But that was a wide guess based on a woefully incomplete picture, and she knew it. If nothing else, Akemi Homura was never so altruistic that she would never throw her destiny away for the sake of a few goddess-forsaken snow traps and fishing posts that had barely a couple of thousand people inhabiting it at any given time.

"_Unfortunately, your guess is as good as mine. I do not sense a connection to any of my fellows here either. Is this what you humans call 'loneliness'?"_

Homura did not answer this question. Instead, she asked another two. "Why have witches returned? Where is Madoka?"

"_There you go about that 'Madoka' again,"_ it answered, its tone giving an honest, but fruitless effort at simulating exasperation. _"I could say nothing about the alleged existence called 'Kaname Madoka', but it cannot be doubted that this is an irregular occurrence. Indeed, that artifact on your left arm is exactly as you described. That would mean you were right about the concept of 'witches' and 'Grief Seeds', and by extension Kaname Madoka."_

"So you have no idea of what's going on here yourself?"

_"It's unfortunate, but that's exactly the case,"_ Kyuubey promptly affirmed. At that particular moment, she almost regretted saving it from the flames.

"How useless..." she muttered. "In that case, keep your eyes open for any clues as to what is going on. Even I can't see or hear very far in this storm."

* * *

With Kyuubey in tow, Homura continued to brave the snowstorm and, with very measured, deliberate steps, search the area. For what it was worth, the worst of the storm had begun to recede and taper off as night fell upon the area. As Kyuubey had said earlier, they were indeed on a mountain, and at an altitude that would likely seem closer to the peak than to the base. The air was still thin, and the cloud cover was as thick as ever; but the snowstorm had abated to the point where she could see a comfortable distance around her.

Much like the storm, the fighting had calmed down considerably as well. The laboratory inside the mountain was in ruins, and likely everyone unfortunate enough to still be inside had died. Homura sighed in irritation at her own self; if she had not been so focused on getting herself out… if she just had a clearer head back then and ignored her own pain… then perhaps she could have saved her fellow Puella Magi before the attack on the laboratory had progressed too far. While the brunt of the fighting seemed to be over, the sandy brown mechs belonging to the victors had continued increasing their numbers and pouring into the mountain's interior. They were searching the mountain's base for something, or someone. Homura began to feel that if she were able to beat the searchers to whatever it was they were still here for, her own position relative to the situation would improve.

Operating on the assumption that they had yet to find what they were probing the mountain installation for, Homura carefully tracked the machines' movements and routes, taking care as she did so to avoid being caught herself in their dragnet. She especially prioritized the sides of the mountain where there were comparatively fewer of them. She still moved cautiously and slowly when the snowstorm was thick enough to drastically impede visibility, but when and where she could see more than a couple of feet ahead of her, she moved quickly. She especially avoided the skies whenever possible as she figured that the mechs would easily pick up either her form or her energy signature while in flight.

She had advanced 150 feet, by her own reckoning, below her initial point of exit when her Soul Gem began to gleam hotly.

_"Homura! That overwhelming energy... Can you feel it?"_

"I feel something," she did confirm. A dreadful sense of foreboding threatened to weigh her down and root her to her spot, as if to do otherwise would be to march into a waiting grave. It was a feeling like, and yet unlike, that of mortal terror, the likes of which no demon or witch – aside from the dreaded _Walpurgisnacht_, which she had not occasion to face in an unfathomably long time – could evoke in the seasoned veteran. And yet, it all felt terribly familiar somehow.

_"We should follow this signature to its source. It could shed more light on our situation."_

Right. She had almost forgotten that the little bastard did not quite feel fear or apprehension as humans did. It certainly had its own methods and protocols of self-preservation, but the fear of death, as an innate feeling that could possibly interfere with its directives or deter acting upon them, was as alien to Kyuubey as Kyuubey was alien to her.

But for all that having been said, Kyuubey was right. Giving into her apprehension could potentially cost her a crucial chance to find the answers she so desperately sought.

Her resolve to finish tracking down the source of this mysterious energy led her back into the mountain compound via a cave entrance far off the beaten path. Unlike previous sections of the laboratory, this room was largely untouched from the natural cave formation it was hewn out of, which suggested that this room was not part of the original laboratory design. This also meant that it was wider and had much more room with which to maneuver than the corridors with which to move around. Further adding to the "natural" atmosphere of this formation, a shallow pool of ice melt lay across an untouched expanse of interior just to the left of the entrance. Nonetheless, she saw a collection of black cabling snaking alongside the walls and ceiling, which all but confirmed in her mind that she was on the right track to something. In addition, she saw another of the three butterfly mechs patrolling the interior. Their presence, ironically enough, benefited her, as the cave was completely dark except for the small light reflections off their gleaming coats and the flashlight-like probes emitting from their compound eyes.

The ample, roomy, dimly-lit interior of the cave allowed Homura a fairly easy opportunity to evade the butterflies normally. Even so, she activated her time-stop and reduced the slim margin of error to 0%.

At the end of the trail of wires set a room that unnaturally segued from the natural formation of the cave system surrounding it to a sterile environment that was much more like the laboratory she had grown familiar with. Unlike the other sections of the laboratory, however, this one remained undiscovered by the invaders and thus untouched by the ravages of war. Much like the room in the laboratory she had escaped, containment centers – four in total for this particular room – ringed the edges, and each of them had a corresponding HAZMAT box and computer. There were differences, however. The containment centers were empty of anything besides that strange fluid, despite their undamaged state. Moreover, all but one of the four computer terminals in the room were inactive. Only the one at the corner of the room farthest from Homura and to her right was active, and that was being worked on by the only person besides her in the room.

Homura hid herself and Kyuubey behind one of the containment capsules and watched the scientist intently. Although this person was masked and clad like the other scientists, and although Homura could see only the back of her, she could nevertheless see telltale signs of this one being female. Long, light lavender locks of hair peeked out from underneath the mask; the hands pounding away at the keyboard were undisguised and clearly slender and feminine; and her heavy breathing was of a voice that could only belong to a girl. As if heedless of the intruder in the room, the girl on the keyboard continued typing furiously at the keyboard. She was clearly in a hurry and not in any luxury to calmly assess whatever situation she was in.

"No way," the lavender-haired girl muttered to herself as she assessed whatever data was in front of her. "Right into Academy City? But that should be the last place on Earth... I don't get it at all... What is she trying to do here?"

Lavender seemed to want to throw her hands up in exasperation... but stopped when the door to the right made a hissing sound and smoke came out of it. Lavender immediately unmanned her terminal and placed her left hand against her hooded forehead. When she unclasped that hand, a gem with a glowing core the color of bright lavender, encased within a cage of gold, appeared within it.

_"Homura, that's a Soul Gem!"_

_"I can clearly see that,"_ replied Homura telepathically.

A nimbus of magic wound its way through the form of the mystery Puella Magi, blurring her form into indistinctness as it did so. Her visage flickered unsteadily for a fraction of a second before finally disappearing from sight, leaving behind only her work on the computer as evidence of her existence.

_"Teleportation?"_ Homura wondered.

_"Not quite. She's still here. It's just that she manipulated the light in the area so that she would not be detected by sight. Her power seems to be invisibility."_

Indeed, even while invisible to the eye, she was still finishing up, though she was even more in a rush than before. Likely, she was trying to finish and get up before the door finished depressurizing and opening up. Only now that she was invisible, Homura could see past her and find out just what it was she was working on.

Homura activated her own magical ability of time stopping just before the mystery Puella Magi could completely wipe the screen. On the computer screen was a geopolitical green-on-black vector map of Japan that was unevenly pockmarked with red, blinking dots. The distribution of these dots was very noticeably heavily skewed; while between Hokkaido and the surrounding islands, including the one she was on now, there were only three dots, the mainland was teeming with them. Most noticeably, an area corresponding to western Tokyo, in addition to containing by far the most numerous and most rapidly blinking dots, also contained a huge red circle around it.

The locations pinpointed by the dots were significant; of that much Homura could tell. But what was the significance exactly? Were they the locations of other laboratories similar to this one? Were they known bases of the laboratories' enemies? Or was it...?

Homura decided to release the time lock and allow the scene to play out. The door at the other side of the room finally opened, and two figures briskly stepped through. The taller of the two was yet another balaclava-wearing lab-coated goon, while the shorter...

The shorter was the one in the dark sunburst mask who singlehandedly defeated the witch.

"Have we been followed?" the shorter one asked the taller one. Her voice, although demanding and authoritative, was nonetheless clearly that of a teenage girl's.

"Negative," the taller one replied. The obsequious, servile note in this older man's voice indicated clearly that he was subordinate to the shorter one. Unsurprising, considering she was likely far more dangerous than he could ever be. "Neither our enemies within Academy City nor the Association of Science knows anything about this annex."

"Just so," she responded. "Have you found Bradwell or the escapee yet?"

"Negative," the taller one replied again. "But it does not matter, does it? Even if this 'Bradwell' girl shows up at this point, and somehow evades the surveillance net of the 'Holly Blues' and the powered armors, that simply means she has missed her window of opportunity to effect any meaningful interference. With the sole exception of the one girl, all of the subjects who have not perished thus far have already been salvaged and relocated to other installations. It is only a matter of time before the last straggler is recaptured. Of that I can assure you."

"You overestimate yourselves," she responded. "There are plenty of places in this mountain range to hide and wait out a search force if you know where to look. Like this place here, right?"

"Point very much taken. However, if she is in hiding, then she is too busy lying low to be of any threat to us. What could she do? Try to rescue her fellow subjects? If so, she will find _that_ city far more inhospitable to her ilk than any snowcap, I can assure you."

"You had better hope you're right, for all of our sakes," she said. She then waved in the direction of a terminal nearer the entrance. "Patch me through to Kihara, and be quick about it."

"Sir," he answered crisply, already trotting toward said terminal. Both Homura and the invisible magical girl, independently of each other, repositioned themselves (using their respective powers) to get a better viewing and hearing angle of the anticipated correspondence.

The scientist dutifully checked the encryption keys and then logged onto the network using a username and a password that were asterisk-ed away from sight. After a confirmation screen appeared, he planted his face, left eye first, onto the screen. The witch-mask folded her arms in a show of impatience while her subordinate patiently cleared his way through layers of security.

"What's taking so long?" she asked him.

"A few seconds, if you will, Sir," he implored. "The blizzard is causing some slight interference with the data transfer rate."

"Reduce the quality of the telecom feed. Change the settings to 'SOUND ONLY' if you must," she ordered. "Time is of the essence."

"That will not be necessary," he said, indicating the screen. Surely enough, the screen display changed from its black-and-green display to a vibrant, high-resolution color screen. On the other end of the screen appeared another person with an evil sunburst mask identical to that of the one nearer Homura. This one appeared to be slightly taller, but no other identifying marks could be discerned. Surrounding this one was a backdrop of pure white, presumably done deliberately so as to enhance anonymity.

The witch-mask in the cave balled her gloved right hand into a fist and jabbed it downward at, and through, the desk. "Who the Hell are you? And where is Kihara Ryoushi?" Evidently, she had meant to talk to someone other than this person.

"The good doctor had some other business to take care of," the other masked person said. Unlike the previous witch-mask, this one used a voice changer to further disguise any chance of identification. "For the time being, you may use me as your point of contact. I have been authorized to act on his behalf concerning this matter. Shall I reconfirm my authentication?"

"Where. Is. Kihara?" she demanded once again.

"We have confirmed the retrieval of the subjects thus far sent. As of this communication, teleportation-type espers are en route to receive the final subject. Afterwards, you are to leave the installation immediately. Are we clear on this point?"

The disgust and indignation the female witch-mask suffered showed strongly even through the total face and body covering. "Perfectly clear," she said, trying and only fairly succeeding at suppressing the anger in her voice.

"Ah, and one more thing," the one on the other end of the line added.

"…?"

"Elise Bradwell."

"What about her?"

"You should have been more careful. She is within that very same room."

"Impossi—"

The words on the lackey scientist's throat died instantly. With a bright flash of lavender light, the hidden magical girl instantly materialized back into view and threw off her hood. Five six-foot, whip-like rods of radiant, hardened lavender light instantly materialized from underneath the sleeves of her lab coat and shredded through the garments, revealing once and for all her true identity as a Puella Magi.

Long tufts of wavy, if slightly unkempt, light purple hair, roughly equivalent to Homura's in length, ended in straight bangs that seemed to spill past and cover her right eye and both of her ears. A single braid was tied horizontally across this hair at the front, with the tying mechanism being a lavender-colored ornament shaped like a crescent moon. At 5'6", she was roughly on par with her opponent insofar as height, yet her flawlessly white skin color and her face, most especially her high cheekbones, marked her as a girl of Caucasian ethnicity. Her clothing consisted of a white-and-violet laced corset and matching neck bow positioned as if to add lift to her rather impressively-sized breasts. Her hands were covered only with gloves with the same decorations, translucency, and color as her "upper armor". The bottom of her magical girl outfit consisted of a black-and-purple Glen check patterned skirt that reached down to just past her knees. Completing the princess-like look was a pair of glossy high-heeled slippers, reminiscent of the Cinderella story, worn under translucent lavender-tinted leggings that covered, if not obscured from eyesight, what parts of her legs the skirt did not. The beams of light extended from the tips of her right hand's fingers and moved as if they were extensions of her own limbs.

After her transformation completed, she wasted not a second further and went on the attack. She swung her right hand downward and to the left, and the blades of light followed, completely slicing through the nearest containment capsule like a high-speed, high-powered cutting laser and destroying it instantly. That which seemed to be impervious to all of the force Homura could muster while she was inside one had been out with ease. Without losing any momentum, Elise's light beams then descended on the witch-mask.

"ELISE!" Screaming out her opponent's name, the girl with the mask grabbed all five light beams out of the sky with her right hand and pulled on them. The lights wavered and flashed as the masked girl struggled with the source of the sudden attack in a game of tug-of-war.

That was the moment Homura decided to attack. She did not know who the lavender-haired girl was or why she was fighting, and she had only recently discovered what kind of being she was and the nature of her powers. But everything she knew about the situation told her that the one in the mask was one of the people running the experiments and that she had the potential to be an exceedingly dangerous enemy. To deal with her would be to knock one of the key pieces in this deadly chessboard off the board in one early, decisive stroke. In the event that the light-wielding girl was another enemy, she could interrogate or handle her at her leisure after the bigger threat was taken care of.

She activated her time freeze, which stopped the two combatants in the middle of their combat and allowed easy, unfettered shots right at the masked girl's center mass. Whoever this girl was, she could not dodge both the beams of light and an unloaded clip at full-auto at the same time. She quickly whipped out a Beretta ARX-160 assault rifle, disabled the safeties, primed the gun, loaded with ammunition, and took aim. With her, this would all come to a swift end before it could escalate any further.

"_Homura! Be careful! She can still move!"_

The beginnings of a cry of disbelief erupted from Homura's throat. That was all she was able to get out before a force that she could not detect impacted in the center of her face and sent her and Kyuubey flying helplessly backwards into the wall. The assault rifle clanged and echoed loudly in the otherwise silent frozen world as it fell from her hands and onto the ground. The leftover momentum from the force that hit her caused her to sink painfully into the rocky surface of the wall; and when that force finally abated, Homura slumped off of the wall and fell helplessly onto the ground.

"So that's how you were able to slip through the cracks. I see now. I see it perfectly. But even so, I can't understand you. I don't understand," the witch-mask said, her right fist balled and extended toward Homura's direction. "You possess such magnificent power, and yet you resort to toys like these. Why?" She retracted her fist and contemptuously kicked the weapon away from Homura's reach.

_Did she just… punch me? _"But that's… who… what are…" Homura managed to squeak out before coughing up a wad of blood. She tried to pick herself off the ground, but the witch-mask preempted this by stomping forcefully onto her back and thus pinning her once more to the floor.

"You will be properly cared for later," she said, lifting her foot off Homura and at the same time returning her attention the blades of light. Grabbing hold of them once again, after a minor exertion, she severed the light blades partway from their source by "ripping" them in half. As soon as she did so, the light source holding the blades together vanished, as did Homura's magic holding the surroundings in place. Time flowed once again.

"!?" The Puella Magi named Elise drew back in shock after realizing that her attack had suddenly disappeared before her very eyes. Quickly recovering, however, she returned to invisibility and, from a direction at a drastically different angle from where she seemed to be facing, shot out another five lavender light beams, these ones nearly enough to cross the entire room edgewise. The witch-mask simply responded to this onslaught by dodging the beams as they passed through and grabbing, twisting, and destroying the ones that threatened to close her in. When one of the inert computers near the other scientist had been destroyed by the light beams, and when said scientist barely avoided having his own person cut down by a row of three blades, he decided that courage was the better part of valor and made a hasty exit from the room.

Refusing to just lie there and give up, Homura picked herself off the ground and considered her options. She at first considered a flash bomb, figuring the enemy was not going to be deflecting and negating attacks when blind, after all. Then she took the measure of the room and decided against it. She would just get caught in the blast herself, and she knew for a fact that the enemy was able to move in a time freeze, which meant Homura simply couldn't time it to go off while she was at a safe distance. She instead decided on the bow. Kneeling on one knee, she once again took aim and, timing her shots to match when the enemy's more dangerous hand was too busy manipulating the blades of light, fired. The witch-mask dodged to the side to avoid the shots of pink light while still tangling with the lavender light, but Homura had accounted for that. She readied another shot…

…only to have her hands violently jerked upwards and to the right and held in place. This forced her to let go of the bow, which disappeared into motes of pink light upon hitting the ground.

_Shit. Now what?_

Homura quickly turned around to see what was binding her. She found her answer in the form of another armored butterfly hovering near the entrance of the room. She had sneaked past them on the way to this point using magic; once she thought about it, it was not surprising that they would turn up again once she made her presence known. She regretted not simply destroying them when she first passed by them, even with the potential risk of blowing her cover. However, in using her Soul Gem to reinforce her tiny frame with supernatural strength, she was able to rectify that mistake. With a jerk of her captured hand, she tugged on the strings tethering her to the butterfly and yanked it

"As much as I enjoyed this display," the masked person on the other end of the teleconference line cut in without preamble, "I must inform you that the teleportation-type espers mentioned earlier have arrived. Preparations will now be made for the extraction of the final subject."

"Final subject? Wait, there's another one of you? What's the meaning of this?" Bradwell asked. Both the Puella Magi of Light and her opponent had aborted the fighting to pay attention to the teleconference.

"Do as you will," the masked girl responded. "I grow tired of all this."

With that, smoke seeped out of the edges of the cavern ground and walls, and a loud, whirring noise could be heard. Underneath the three girls, the smoky ground shifted and rotated at a speed that threatened to knock Homura and Elise off their feet and ruin their positioning relative to their mutual enemy. The walls and ceiling parted from their foundations and receded into the distance, leaving the three of them on a rocky platform surrounded by walls of pitch-black panels. Lines of carved circuitry ran like arteries through these panels, and through them, patterned pulses of red, blue, yellow, and green flowed endlessly upward.

"What's going on now? And who are you anyway?" Elise asked, finally regarding Homura while not taking her eyes off the masked girl.

"That is what I would like to know," Homura responded.

The girl in the mask looked up. "So if you mind telling me, why did you do such a foolish thing as bring the two of them down here with me?"

In response to this question, a rose-pink light illuminated the panels, revealing a vast, empty chamber with only a single monitor screen in the middle and a clear, glass structure at the other end. Much like the containment centers, it was cylindrical-shaped and filled with the same fluid. It was much taller than its standard counterparts, however, to the point of stretching from the ground to the ceiling. A workstation terminal lay next to the containment column, and next to the computer, yet another hooded scientist stood patiently like a statue.

However, all of those details became superfluous to Homura when she laid eyes upon the occupier of the containment column. A young girl, appearing no older than early adolescence, floated in upside-down suspension inside the containment device, her expression as blank as that of the dead. A fluffy column of pink hair hung off her brow and extended downward to the floor. The sole article of her clothing on the girl's person was a hospital gown that matched the color of her hair.

"Ma… Ma… Mado… ka…?" Upon seeing the girl in the tank, Homura's eyes dilated in disbelief and shock, and her knees gave way, causing her to fall onto them. Just as quickly, the shock subsided, leaving only a burning, rage-filled desire to rescue her and destroy the ones responsible. "Madoka… MADOKA!"

The girl named Kaname Madoka had subjected herself to a fate worse than death in order to give hope to all of the magical girls throughout all time. In confining her here and experimenting on her, the bastards were denying her sacrifice – rejecting the hopes and dreams of magical girls past, present, and future. They had to pay. They could not get away with this. She would not let them.

"_So that girl is Kaname Madoka…_"Kyuubey mused.

"**MADOKA!"**

Consumed with grief and rage, Homura threw her previous caution to the wind and made a dash toward her long-lost friend. As she made the dash, she activated her time artifact, stopped the masked scientist and the magical girl Elise in their tracks.

"You cunning fool!" the masked girl, who was proven to be immune to stopped time, cried out. She tried to intercept Homura, but this time, Homura had a better idea of what her opponent was capable of and had much more room to maneuver around than previously. Figuring the opponent was heavily right-handed, Homura dodged to her own right, pulled the pin off an anti-tank grenade that she had short-fused for just an occasion and threw them right in the masked girl's face, at an angle that would be impossible at the throwing distance for the enemy to cleanly dodge. Before releasing the time lock, for good measure, she armed herself with a katana and charged straight at the containment column's computer console and at the hooded lackey next to it.

Before she could finish this, however, the time lock forcibly expired without Homura's consent. She aborted her run on the containment center and darted away from the grenade, lest the explosion which she knew would be coming a mere two seconds later take her with it. The ensuing explosion engulfed the girl in the mask and the nearby other magical girl and encased half the strange chamber in a smoky haze. This, in turn, allowed Homura to right her course and continue her dash toward Madoka.

_Just a little more… Just a little more… Madoka…_

When the smoke finally cleared, the computer was destroyed. The connectors had been blown off and incinerated, while shrapnel from the grenade itself lodged itself in the monitor's screen, finishing the machine off. The masked scientist near the console was nowhere in sight. Homura did not care about that one. The grenade must have saved her the trouble of liquidating him.

_We can finally be reunited. This time, I can properly protect you. Just a little more…_

Upon finally reaching the containment column, she found…

…absolutely nothing.

Homura paused instantly and took a step back. Where did this go wrong? Did she use too powerful a grenade and accidentally blow Madoka away? No, that could not be it; she would never make such an elementary mistake. The cylinder was completely untouched, and any attack that harmed Madoka from without would have had to pierce the glass-like shell protecting her. Did the girl with the mask do something? No, she had taken the brunt of the attack as Homura had expected, and although she was clearly not yet dead, she was on her back and scrambling to her feet. The upper half of the sunburst mask had been blown off her face, revealing a set of heterochromatic eyes whose silver (right) and blue (left) irises contracted in rage. If nothing else, it was nice to know that the bitch was not, as Homura had begun to fear on some gut level, invulnerable to being attacked.

This left only the light-wielding magical girl as a possible suspect. This too was unlikely, as she was too busy unfurling a shield of hardened light to possibly go after Madoka. Depending on how far her blades of light could be extended, and depending on how much control she had over the properties of the light she wielded, she could have used her light to pass through the barrier and solidify inside, leaving Madoka at her mercy. Again, however, this was unlikely, unless she considered destroying Madoka or making her disappear with her light a necessary sacrifice in the effort of stopping whatever her enemy was planning.

So what had happened?

As she had continued thinking, she came to a realization which hit her like a splash of ice-cold water.

"_As of this communication, teleportation-type espers are en route to receive the final subject."_

"Teleportation…"

"_Afterwards, you are to leave the installation immediately."_

In that very instant, the panels powered down and turned pitch-black again, leaving the three in darkness. The ground began to rumble fitfully, and much more violently and uncontrollably than the first time.

"So it's begun," the now partially-unmasked girl's voice chimed victoriously in the darkness.

"No, it ends here."

"Only for you. This laboratory is now done for, and has been consigned to the darkness. Darkness that allows no light in for you to utilize, Elise."

A chain reaction of explosions blasted away the walls on the other side of the room and advanced their way forward at a quickening rate. As soon as these explosions started, Elise reactivated her blades of light on both of her hands.

"See?" Elise said. "There's plenty of light to go around."

"You fool. Does your determination to settle things with me really go so far?"

"Hey, stranger. You with the guns and bombs."

"What?" Homura asked, surprised that Elise would talk to her even while she was fighting her enemy.

"That girl with the pink hair, inside the big tube. She was your friend, wasn't she?"

"And so what if she was?"

"You saw the map I pulled up, with the big red circle around western Tokyo? That's a special place within the Tokyo area called Academy City. I wasn't able to pinpoint where exactly, but wherever they took that girl and the others, I'm certain it's somewhere within that city."

Elise's and the masked girl's silhouettes became visible among the encroaching flames.

"Why are you telling me this?" asked Homura. "Even if you gain my gratitude, that's no guarantee that I'll be willing to help you."

"Agreeable type, aren't we?" Elise retorted. "It's just that… I figured you wanted to save your friend."

The containment cylinder crashed down onto the ground loudly, and the flames roared ever the hotter and consumed all the faster.

"What about you?" Homura asked her finally.

"You worry about yourself, and about your friend," Elise said. "I'll worry about my own self… and about my own friend."

"_This is bad, Homura!" _Even in the literal heat of the moment, Kyuubey's voice rang loudly and clearly within Homura's mind._ "If we stay here, we'll be caught up in the blasts!"_

Homura did not have the luxury to consider beyond face value the true significance of the other magical girl's words. Forming a violet magical mandala underneath her legs, she shot upward and through rapidly narrowing gaps in the collapsing ceiling. Thus free from the vertical shaft, she switched directions and glided horizontally to the entrance of the cave formation just seconds before a thick wall of ice and snow sealed it shut.

* * *

Once outside, she was faced with the bitter cold of a raging mountainside blizzard. But this time, she was filled with a simmering rage that not even the cold of the north could snuff out.

An entire colony of butterfly drones converged on Homura in mid-flight and tried to subdue her with their strings. One time-stopped second later, a cluster of grenades had completely blown them right out of the air.

Three brown mechs flew in Homura's direction and opened fire. All three of them were hacked apart lengthwise by a katana, the clean cuts in their armor materializing well before their systems could even recognize that they had been damaged.

Homura did not have to look back, nor did she, to hear the loud, satisfying explosions that ripped apart the laboratory compound.

_"Where to now, Homura?"_ Kyuubey asked.

"To Tokyo. No, to this 'Academy City'. If Madoka is in that place, I will find her. And if they dare lay a finger on her, I will use every means at my disposal to eliminate them."

_Madoka. Even now, my answer has not changed. No matter what may come, I will save you. I will protect you._


End file.
